fter the
hardships they had endured. To complete their good fortune, there came
shortly afterwards to the place two canoes with Indians, among whom
there happened to be a native of Chiloe, who spoke a little Spanish.
The surgeon who accompanied Captain Cheap understood that language,
and made a bargain with the Chiloe Indian, that, if he would carry the
captain and his people in the barge to Chiloe, he should have her and
all her furniture for his reward. Accordingly, on the 6th of March,
the eleven persons, to which the company was now reduced, embarked
again in the barge on this new expedition. After having proceeded
a few days, the captain and four of his principal officers being on
shore, the six, who remained in the barge along with an Indian, shoved
her off and put to sea, and never returned again.

Captain Cheap, together with Mr Hamilton, lieutenant of marines, the
honourable Mr Byron and Mr Campbell, midshipmen, and Mr Elliot, the
surgeon, were thus left on shore in the most deplorable situation
imaginable. It might be thought that their distresses, long before
this time, were hardly capable of being increased: Yet they found
their present situation much more dismaying than any thing they had
hitherto experienced; being left on a desert coast, far from the
haunts of men, without provisions, or the means of procuring any, and
with no visible prospect of relief; for their arms and ammunition, and
every convenience that had hitherto remained to them, except the few
tattered garments they had on, were all carried away in the barge.
While revolving the various circumstances of this new and unlooked-for
calamity, and sadly persuaded that they had no possible relief to hope
for, they perceived a canoe at a distance, which proved to be that
belonging to the Indian of Chiloe, who had undertaken to convey them
to that island. He it seems had left Captain Cheap and his people,
only a little before, to go a fishing in his canoe, accompanied by his
family, leaving the barge in the mean time under the care of the other
Indian, whom the sailors had carried with them to sea. When he came
on shore, and found the barge and his companion gone, he was much
concerned, and was with difficulty persuaded that his companion had
not been murdered; yet, being at last satisfied with the account that
was given him by Mr Elliot, he still undertook to carry them to the
Spanish settlements, and, being well skilled in fishing and fowling,
he