This Was A
Very Serious Matter To Me, As I Could Not Tell How Charles Allen
Might Act, If, After Waiting In Vain For Me, He Should Return To
Wahai, And Find That I Had Left There Long Before, And Had Not
Since Been Heard Of.
Such an event as our missing an island forty
miles long would hardly occur to him, and he would conclude
either that our boat had foundered, or that my crew had murdered
me and run away with her.
However, as it was physically
impossible now for me to reach him, the only thing to be done was
to make the best of my way to Waigiou, and trust to our meeting
some traders, who might convey to him the news of my safety.
Finding on my map a group of three small islands, twenty-five
miles north of Poppa, I resolved, if possible, to rest there a
day or two. We could lay our boat's head N.E. by N.; but a heavy
sea from the eastward so continually beat us off our course, and
we made so much leeway, that I found it would be as much as we
could do to reach them. It was a delicate point to keep our head
in the best direction, neither so close to the wind as to stop
our way, or so free as to carry us too far to leeward. I
continually directed the steersman myself, and by incessant
vigilance succeeded, just at sunset, in bringing our boat to an
anchor under the lee of the southern point of one of the islands.
The anchorage was, however, by no means good, there being a
fringing coral reef, dry at low water, beyond which, on a bottom
strewn with masses of coral, we were obliged to anchor.
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