ships, the Vincennes, after having discovered a long
extent of coast stretching from east to west. On the approach of the
bad season, he returned to Hobart Town, in Tasmania. The same year,
the expedition of the French captain Dumont d'Urville, which
started in 1838, discovered Adelie Land in 66 deg. 30' latitude and
38 deg. 21' east longitude, and Clarie Coast in 64 deg. 30' and 129 deg.
54'. Their campaign having ended with these important discoveries,
the _Astrolabe_ and the _Zelee_ left the Antarctic Ocean and returned
to Hobart Town.

None of these ships, then, were in those waters; so that, when our
nutshell _Paracuta_ was "alone on a lone, lone sea" beyond the
ice-barrier, we were bound to believe that it was no longer possible
we could be saved.

We were fifteen hundred miles away from the nearest land, and winter
was a month old!

Hurliguerly himself was obliged to acknowledge the last fortunate
chance upon which he had counted failed us.

On the 6th of April we were at the end of our resources; the sea
began to threaten, the boat seemed likely to be swallowed up in the
angry waves.

"A ship!" cried the boatswain, and on the instant we made out a
vessel about four miles to the north-east, beneath the mist which
had suddenly risen.

Signals were made, signals were perceived; the ship lowered her
largest boat and sent it to our rescue.

This ship was the _Tasman_, an American three-master, from
Charlestown, where we were received with eager welcome and
cordiality. The captain treated my companions as though they had
been his own countrymen.

The _Tasman_ had come from the Falkland Islands where the captain had
learned that seven months previously the American schooner _Halbrane_
had gone to the southern seas in search of the shipwrecked people of
the _Jane_. But as the season advanced, the schooner not having
reappeared, she was given up for lost in the Antarctic regions.

Fifteen days after our rescue the _Tasman_ disembarked the survivors
of the crew of the two schooners at Melbourne, and it was there that
our men were paid the sums they had so hardly earned, and so well
deserved.

We then learned from maps that the _Paracuta_ had debouched into the
Pacific from the land called Clarie by Dumont d'Urville, and the
land called Fabricia, which was discovered in 1838 by Bellenny.

Thus terminated this adventurous and extraordinary expedition, which
cost, alas, too many victims. Our final word is tha