the 21st, and from this day to November 2nd the time was spent in
fruitless endeavours to get into Cook's Strait. Gale succeeded gale--no
uncommon thing here--and in one of them the Adventure parted company
never again to rejoin. Cook anchored in Queen Charlotte's Sound on
November 2nd, and waited until the 25th for his consort in vain. Whilst
here they gained further and indisputable proof of the cannibalistic
tendencies of the Maoris, some of the natives eating human flesh before
them. Cook has been much blamed for permitting this scene, which took
place on board; but there had been so much disputing in England as to the
possibility of the fact, that he could not resist the opportunity of
putting it beyond a doubt.

It was, however, to be shortly proved in a much more horrible manner, for
the Adventure, which only arrived at Queen Charlotte's Sound after the
Resolution left, had a boat's crew attacked, overpowered, and eaten by
the natives. The circumstances were never wholly known, as not a man
escaped; but the cooked remains were found, the natives decamping as the
search-party approached.

Cook sailed south on November 25th, 1773, and was soon again battling
with the ice, into which he pushed as far as was safe with as much
hardihood as if he had still had the second ship with him. He gained the
latitude of 67 degrees south, and worked eastward, searching religiously
for land--which, needless to say, he never found--his ropes frozen, and
sails like, as he says, plates of metal. Whatever the feelings of others
on board were, Cook never flinched from every effort to get south,
penetrating in one place to 71 degrees south, where he was stopped by
dense pack, until he found himself nearly in the longitude of Tierra del
Fuego, when, satisfied that no Southern Continent existed in the Pacific,
he, on February 6th, steered north, to continue exploration in more