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We were all together twelve in number, in a leaky boat with one of the gun-wales stove in, near the middle of the Western Ocean, without compass, without compass, without quadrant, without sail, without great coat or cloak, all very thinly cloathed, in a gale of wind with a great running sea. It was now five o’clock in the evening, and in half an hour we loft sight of the ship: before it was dark a blanket was discovered in the boat, this was immediately bent to one of the stretchers, and under it as a sail, we scudded away all night in expectation of being swallowed up by every wave, it being with great difficulty that we could sometimes clear the boat of the water before the next great sea. All of us half drowned and scuttling, except those who bailed at the bottom of the boat, and without having really perished, I am sure no people ever endured more. In the morning the weather grew moderate, the wind having drifted to the southward as we discovered by the sun; having survived the night we began to recollect ourselves, and think of our future preservation.
When we quitted the ship the wind was at N. W. or N. N. W. Fayal bore E. S. E. 250, or 260 leagues, had the wind continued 5 or 6 days, there was a probability that running before the sea, we might have fallen in with some of the western islands; the change of wind was death to these hopes, for should it begin to blow we knew there would be no preserving life but by running before the sea, which would carry us again to the northward, where we must soon afterwards perish.
Upon examining what we had to subsist on, I found a bag of bread, a small ham, a single piece of pork, two quart bottles of water, and a few French cordials. The wind continued to the southward for 8 or 9 days, and providentially never blew so strong but that we could keep the side of the boat to the sea, but we were always miserably wet and cold. We kept a sort of reckoning, but the sun and stars being sometimes hid from us in the 24 hours, we had no very good opinion of our navigation. We judged at this period that we had made nearly an E. N. E. course since the first night’s run, which had carried us to the S. E. and expecting to see the island of
