the 13th of December, 1796, and her crew, chiefly Lascars, managed to
keep her afloat till the 9th of the following February, when the skipper
made Preservation Island, and there beached her. All the people landed
safely, and got what stores they could ashore. Then it was decided to
despatch the long boat to Port Jackson for help.

Thompson the mate, Clarke the supercargo, three European seamen, and
a dozen Lascars manned the boat and left the island on the 29th of
February. On the 1st of March the boat was driven ashore and battered
to pieces close to Cape Howe (near the present boundary line of Victoria
and New South Wales) three hundred miles from Sydney, in a country never
before trodden by the feet of white men. All hands were saved, and after
a fortnight's rest, feeding on such shellfish as they could obtain, the
party set out to walk to Sydney.

Clarke kept a rough diary of this journey, telling of encounters with
blacks, of death and madness by starvation and other privations; of how
they crossed wide and shark-infested rivers by building rafts of tree
branches cut down and fashioned with jack knives; of how the lives of
men were purchased from the blacks by strips of clothing; and of how
they counted the buttons on their ragged garments, and thus reckoned how
many lives could be bought from the savages with what remained.

The terrible march lasted until the 15th of May; then three exhausted
men, horrible to look upon, and the only survivors of seventeen who had,
sixty days before, begun the journey, were picked up a few miles to the
south of Sydney by a fishing boat.

The spot where they were seen walking along the beach was close to Port
Hacking, and Clarke, three days before his rescue, had lit a fire and
cooked some fish with coal he picked up. This was the first discovery of
the great southern coal-fields of New South Wales.

There are other less gruesome stories than these; for example that of
the Sydney whaler _Policy_, which, sailing under a Letter of Marque
for the Moluccas, was set upon by a Dutch private ship of war--the
_Swift_--at one time a formidable and successful French privateer.
Captain Foster of the _Policy_, though his armament was very inferior
and many of his crew were prostrated with fever, engaged the Dutchman,
fought him for some hours, and brought his ship a prize into Sydney
Harbour. Two Spanish vessels were captured in the same way by armed
Sydney whalers; so that Australian wa