wreck of their ship and the consequent detention of Bradbury, along with the rest of the crew and the officers, for some time upon a waste island. It happened as follows: All sails were set and the old ship was plunging along before the wind. A high sea was running and the tide was at its full. It was the sixteenth of June, 1846, and in the middle of the afternoon. The fog rested so densely on the water that it was difficult to see even a ship's length ahead, and still the ship was driving at top speed. Suddenly the order came to shorten sail, and the men willingly climbed the masts and began . reefing, for all knew the rashness of running at such a speed in the obscurity. But as the men were in the midst of their work, the vessel struck—just what was not immediately known, but so suddenly that the sailors were all but thrown from the yards.
The obstruction proved, however, as soon discovered, a reef of rocks, and the Baltic was hard and fast on Bering's Island, as then known, near the entrance to the straits. The command now came to lower away the boats, and make to the shore, as heavy breakers on the vessel threatened to soon batter her to pieces. The fog seemed to lift a little at this juncture, as they loaded into the boats and cleared away, and there appeared before them a smooth, sandy shore, white with sea foam; and also with flocks of what looked to the sailors as large and white as sheep—but proved, of course, to be white-breasted sea birds. Riding well on the tops of the combers, the boats made a good landing, running half their length on the sand as they struck; and this being on the crest of the tide, they were then readily drawn up above water line and turned over to form a shelter, under which the men spread their blankets. "It was a lucky landing,' says Mr. Bradbury. Almost anywhere else on the island the shore was rocky and bluff, and the ship going at storm speed,
