About the middle of March, Captain Cheap and the four who were left with him set out for Chiloe, the Indian having procured a number of canoes, and got many of his neighbours together for that purpose. Soon after they embarked, Mr. Elliot, the surgeon, died, so that there now remained only four of the whole company. At last, after a very complicated passage by land and water, Captain Cheap, Mr. Byron, and Mr. Campbell arrived, in the beginning of June, at the island of Chiloe, where they were received by the Spaniards with great humanity; but, on account of some quarrel among the Indians, Mr. Hamilton did not get thither till two months after. Thus, above a twelvemonth after the loss of the Wager, ended this fatiguing peregrination, which by a variety of misfortunes had diminished the company from twenty to no more than four, and those, too, brought so low that had their distresses continued but a few days longer, in all probability none of them would have survived. For the captain himself was with difficulty recovered and the rest were so reduced by the severity of the weather, their labour, and their want of all kinds of necessaries, that it was wonderful how they supported themselves so long. After some stay at Chiloe, the captain and the three who were with him were sent to Valparaiso, and thence to Santiago, the capital of Chile where they continued above a year; but on the advice of a cartel being settled betwixt Great Britain and Spain, Captain Cheap, Mr. Byron, and Mr. Hamilton were permitted to return to Europe on board a French ship. The other midshipman, Mr. Campbell, having changed his religion whilst at Santiago, chose to go back overland to Buenos Ayres with Pizarro and his officers, with whom he went afterwards to Spain on board the Asia; and there having failed in his endeavours to procure a commission from the Court of Spain, he returned to England, and attempted to get reinstated in the British Navy, and has since published a narration of his adventures, in which he complains of the injustice that had been done him and strongly disavows his ever being in the Spanish service. But as the change of his religion and his offering himself to the Court of Spain (though not accepted) are matters, which he is conscious, are capable of being incontestably proved, on these two heads he has been entirely silent. And now, after this account of the catastrophe of the Wager, I shall again resume the thread of our own story. CHAPTER 14. THE LOSSES FROM SCURVY--STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE SQUADRON. EXTRAORDINARY MORTALITY.