During all this time it rained very hard, and never had we experienced a more dismal night. In the morning we tried to get the canoe right side up; but finding that impossible, we concluded to abandon it entirely. We took from it a few cocoa-nuts, and, as our last resort, all took refuge in the boat. We saved the compass, and did not so much regret the loss of the canoe, as it had cost us already an incalculable amount of anxiety, toil, and suffering. But new difficulties now stared us in the face. Most of our provisions had been lost by the upsetting of the canoe, and we had but a very small quantity of water. It was therefore deemed expedient to divide among us the means of subsistence remaining. We had four cocoa-nuts for each person, and a few pieces over, which were distributed equally. At this time no objects were seen, except a few sea birds. We continued in this condition for nine days and nights, with actual starvation before us, as the most probable end of our anxieties and sufferings. We were about settling down into a state of confirmed despair, when, to our inexpressible joy, we discovered land apparently about ten miles off. We exerted all our remaining strength to reach it. When within six miles we saw, approaching us, a fleet of eighteen canoes, filled with the natives of the small island we were approaching. At first the small canoes came near us, for the purpose of ascertaining who and what we were. The appearance of these natives was such as to excite at once our astonishment and disgust. Like the inhabitants of the island we had left, they were entirely naked; and, as our subsequent experience proved, they were infinitely more barbarous and cruel. Very soon the large canoes came up, when the wretches commenced their outrages. They attacked us with brutal ferocity, knocking us overboard with their clubs, in the mean time making the most frightful grimaces, and yelling like so many incarnate devils. They fell upon our boat and immediately destroyed it, breaking it into splinters, and taking the fragments into their canoes. While this was going on we were swimming from one canoe to another, entreating them by signs to spare our lives and permit us to get into their canoes. This they for a long time refused, beating us most unmercifully, whenever we caught hold of any thing to save ourselves from sinking. After they had demolished our boat, and kept us in that condition for some time, they allowed us to get on board. They then compelled us to row towards the land. They stripped us of all our clothing immediately after we were taken in; and the reader may form some idea of our distress in this condition, under a burning sun, from the fact, that before night our shoulders were blistered, by being thus exposed to the heat.