just big enough to
shelter the two boats. Here an accident happened that alarmed us much.
After securing our boats, we climbed up a rock scarcely large enough to
contain our numbers: having nothing to eat, we betook ourselves to our
usual receipt for hunger, which was going to sleep. We accordingly made a
fire, and stowed ourselves round it as well as we could, but two of our men
being incommoded for want of room, went a little way from us into a small
nook, over which a great cliff hung, and served them for a canopy.

In the middle of the night we were awakened with a terrible rambling, which
we apprehended to be nothing less than the shock of an earthquake, which we
had before experienced in these parts; and this conjecture we had reason to
think not ill founded, upon hearing hollow groans and cries as of men half
swallowed up. We immediately got up, and ran to the place from whence the
cries came, and then we were put out of all doubt as to the opinion we had
formed of this accident, for here we found the two men almost buried under
loose stones and earth; but upon a little farther enquiry, we were
undeceived as to the cause we had imputed this noise to, which we found to
be occasioned by the sudden giving way of the impending cliff, which fell a
little beyond our people, carrying trees and rocks with it and loose earth,
the latter of which fell in part on our men, whom we with some pains
rescued from their uneasy situation, from which they escaped with some
bruises.

The next morning we got out early, and the wind being westerly, rowed the
whole day for the head-land we had seen the night before; but when we had
got that length, could find no harbour, but were obliged to go into a sandy
bay, and lay the whole night upon our oars, and a most dreadful one it
proved, blowing and raining very hard. Here we were so pinched with hunger,
that we eat the shoes off our feet, which consisted of raw seal-skin. In
the morning we got out of the bay, but the incessant foul weather had
overcome us, and we began to be indifferent as to what befel us; and the
boats in the night making into a bay, we nearly lost the yawl, a breaker
having filled her and driven her ashore upon the beach. This, by some of
our accounts, was Christmas-day; but our accounts had so often been
interrupted by our distresses, that there was no depending upon them. Upon
seeing the yawl in this imminent danger, the barge stood off and went into
another bay to t