28

HIS SHIPWRECK.

gull as a breakfast, to be divided among one hundred and forty men, after having been without food eightand-forty hours. To such a pitch of misery were they at last reduced, that the gallinaso, the carrion crow of this inhospitable coast, which occasionally came to devour the carcases of the drowned men on the shore, was regarded as a dainty. Some Indians, who rowed into the bay, brought them a few trifling articles, and some provisions were obtained from the vessel; but not in a sufficient quantity to supply the present necessities of the men, who to increase their misfortune, had, on the first striking of the ship among the breakers, made free with all the stores and liquors they could find. All order was at an end; and while one party resolved to pursue a wild journey into the interior, another body determined upon seizing the long boat, which they at last did, leaving the captain, whom they hated, behind. Mr. Byron joined these adventurers; but on discovering their intentions towards the captain, he quitted them; though in so doing he became exposed to the horror of starving, for the fugitives were so unfeeling that they carried away with them every morsel of food that could be obtained from the hull of the wreck. The number remaining on the

island, for such it was now found to be, amounted to twenty; and the only boats they had left, were the barge and yawl. Of the distress to which they were reduced some idea may be formed from the circumstance, that Mr. Byron had an Indian dog, to which he became much attached, but nothing could prevail with the crew to spare the animal from slaughter; and three weeks after this the owner himself was glad to make a meal of the rotten paws and skin which he found on the place where the poor creature had been killed. Among other devices which the seamen had recourse to for a precarious subsistence, one of the most remarkable was that of the boatswain's mate, who having got a water-cask, scuttled it, and lashing it to two logs, made a sort of boat, with which he put out to sea, and succeeded in getting fish and wild fowl, when his comrades on shore were starving. To get away from this inhospitable clime, which, as a great writer says, seems to have been cast aside from human use, the captain came to a resolution of embarking in the two boats, with the hope of being able to reach the island of Chiloe. The attempt was made; but after a struggle of two months, during which the crews lived upon seal,

sea-weed, and tangle, they were driven back by the force of the current to Wager's Island, the place from whence they set out. Their fate appeared now to be fixed, when two canoes arrived with a party of Indians, headed by the chief of a tribe in the

neighbourhood of Chiloe.

With him an agreement

was made, that he should have the barge, and all that had been saved from the wreck on the condition of conducting the people up the creeks and across the bays by which he had himself reached the island. They accordingly embarked once more in the barge, being now reduced to thirteen in number, and entered on a voyage to which there are not many parallels in the history of nautical hardships. To such extremities were they reduced in attempting to force the barge against a rapid stream, that when one of the stoutest of the sailors fell from the oar, exhausted by labour and the want of food, the captain refused to give him a morsel, though he had a large piece of boiled seal by him, so hardened was he become by the familiarity of distress. Mr. Byron was the only one who, having a few dried shell-fish in his pocket, from time to time dropped one into the poor fellow's mouth-an act of kindness which only prolonged his torture, but

not his life. Their attempt to get up the river being fruitless, a party went on shore, and penetrated into the morasses in search of some sustenance; but on their return, six of the remaining crew, with an Indian, advanced hastily and put off, leaving the Captain, Mr. Byron, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Elliot, never to return.

sary

Their misfortunes now seemed to have attained the utmost point of desperate misery; but at this moment Providence relieved them, by the arrival of a canoe, the Indians on board of which agreed to take them up the river. After toiling at their oars three days, they came to a carrying place, where it being necesfor the party to proceed on foot, each person had some load; and Mr. Byron had allotted to him a wet heavy piece of stinking seal, wrapped up in canvas belonging to the captain. Their way was through a thick wood, and a swamp, where every step sunk the person almost to the middle. In this dismal place Mr. Byron was left behind, by falling from a tree into some water, where he narrowly escaped being drowned. With some difficulty he extricated himself; but, on joining his companions, Captain Cheap

reproached him so seriously for losing his piece of seal, that he voluntarily went back five miles to recover it. Notwithstanding this heroic act of generosity, the captain and the whole party embarked without taking Mr. Byron with them when he returned; and, what was still more inhuman in this brutal commander, he did not even leave the youth a morsel of the stinking seal for which he had endured such hardship and had nearly paid his life. Night coming on, and being quite worn out with fatigue and hunger, he there lay down, and fell asleep. Before day he awoke, and hearing some voices at a little distance, he went towards the spot whence the sound proceeded, and found a wigwam, or Indian hut, into which he entered, though not till he had received some blows for his intrusion. The Indians, however, were soon reconciled to him, and he embarked with them in their canoe; but when they hauled up to the shore at night, they all disappeared, and left him alone in a dark, dismal desert, amidst a violent storm of rain. The next day the party returned, and took him with them to a place, where finding a quantity of limpets, he filled his hat with them; but the Indians were so enraged at his throwing the shells overboard, that he