etc. On our return to the landing-place we found to our horror
that a southerly swell was rolling in, and great breakers were
bursting on the beach. About five P.M. we all collected and
looked at the whaler and pram on one side of the rollers and
ourselves on the other. First it was impossible to take off the
guns and specimens, so we made them all up to leave for the
morrow. Second, a sick man had come ashore for exercise, and he
could not be got off: finally, Atkinson stayed ashore with him.
The breakers made the most awe-inspiring cauldron in our little
nook, and it meant a tough swim for all of us. Three of us swam
out first and took a line to the pram, and finally we got a good
rope from the whaler, which had anchored well out, to the shore.
I then manoeuvred the pram, and everybody plunged into the surf
and hauled himself out with the rope. All well, but minus our
belongings, and got back to the ship; very wet and ravenous was a
mild way to put it. During my 12 to 4 watch that night the surf
roared like thunder, and the ship herself was rolling like
anything, and looked horribly close to the shore. Of course she
was quite safe really. It transpired that Atkinson and the seaman
had a horrible night with salt water soaked food, and the crabs
and white terns which sat and watched them all night, squawking
in chorus whenever they moved. It must have been horrible, though
I would like to have stayed, and had I known anybody was staying
would have volunteered. This with the noise of the surf and the
cold made it pretty rotten for them. In the morning, Evans,
Rennick, Oates and I, with two seamen and Gran, took the whaler
and pram in to rescue the maroons. At first we thought we would
do it by a rocket line to the end of the sheer cliff. The
impossibility of such an idea was at once evident, so Gran and I
went in close in the pram, and hove them lines to get off the