At Length We Sent Our Boat, With Five Men In Her, To
See Whither They Rowed, And So With A
White cloth brought one of
their boats with their men along the shore, rowing after our boat,
till such time
As they saw our ship, and then they rowed ashore.
Then I went on shore myself, and gave every of them a threaden
point, and brought one of them aboard of me, where he did eat and
drink, and then carried him on shore again. Whereupon all the rest
came aboard with their boats, being nineteen persons, and they
spake, but we understood them not. They be like to Tartars, with
long black hair, broad faces, and flat noses, and tawny in colour,
wearing seal skins, and so do the women, not differing in the
fashion, but the women are marked in the face with blue streaks down
the cheeks and round about the eyes. Their boats are made all of
seal skins, with a keel of wood within the skin: the proportion of
them is like a Spanish shallop, save only they be flat in the bottom
and sharp at both ends.
The twentieth day we weighed, and went to the east side of this
island, and I and the captain, with four men more, went on shore,
and there we saw their houses, and the people espying us, came
rowing towards our boat, whereupon we plied to our boat; and we
being in our boat and they ashore, they called to us, and we rowed
to them, and one of their company came into our boat, and we carried
him aboard, and gave him a bell and a knife; so the captain and I
willed five of our men to set him ashore at a rock, and not among
the company which they came from, but their wilfulness was such that
they would go to them, and so were taken themselves and our boat
lost.
The next day in the morning we stood in near the shore and shot off
a fauconet, and sounded our trumpet, but we could hear nothing of
our men. This sound we called the Five Men's Sound, and plied out
of it, but anchored again in 30 fathoms and ooze; and riding there
all night, in the morning the snow lay a foot thick upon our
hatches.
The two-and-twentieth day in the morning we weighed, and went again
to the place where we lost our men and our boat. We had sight of
fourteen boats, and some came near to us, but we could learn nothing
of our men. Among the rest, we enticed one in a boat to our ship's
side with a bell; and in giving him the bell we took him and his
boat, and so kept him, and so rowed down to Thomas William's island,
and there anchored all night.
The twenty-sixth day we weighed to come homeward, and by twelve of
the clock at noon we were thwart of Trumpet's Island.
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