were at this time a little scattered; the breeze, however,
favoured us, by freshening up at north-east, which enabled the
whole of us to weather those rocks, without the apprehension of
passing too near them in the dark: in the morning at day-light
they bore west-south-west three leagues.

Here we saw many animals playing along-side, which were at
first taken for seals; but, after having seen a considerable
number of them, I did not think they were the seal, at least they
appeared to me a very different animal from the seals to be met
with on the coast of America and Newfoundland; for they have a
short round head, but these creatures heads were long, and
tapered to the nose; they had very long whiskers, and frequently
raised themselves half the length of the body out of the water,
to look round them, and often leaped entirely out; which I do not
ever recollect to have seen the seal do: from these
circumstances, I judged them to be something of the
sea-otter.

On the night of the 8th, it blew so strong from
north-north-east and north, as to bring us under close reefed
main top-sail and fore-sail; this gale was accompanied with
thunder, lightning, and rain, which soon changed it to the
south-west quarter, and immediately cleared the weather. On the
10th, we had two very violent white squalls from north-west, with
lightning, thunder, and rain: these squalls came on so very
suddenly, that some of the convoy were taken with too much sail
out, which obliged them to let go their tacks and sheets, by
which means one ship carried away her main-yard in the slings,
another had her three top-sails blown from the yards, and a third