It was now resolved that the captain, one seaman, and privates Reid and Inglis, should take a circuit of the sea-girt isle, until they regained the cave, to see whether any one was near to help them. Having started, they reached the hut early in the morning; but as, at the time, it was blowing a heavy gale and snowing hard, they waited a day or two for the weather to moderate. During this interval they consulted together as to their future movements; and private Reid having volunteered to remain alone at the hut, the others commenced, on the 30th July, to make the special tour. Next day two of the party returned to the hut, so that on the 31st July the adventurers were thus dispersed—three on the search, three at the hut, two at the cave, and one of the two sailors in charge of the two sappers at the sick dêpot. The explorers made a long march the first day, examining every nook and every cliff for fresh evidences of habitation. The rain pelted on them; the snow sat in flakes on their gaunt frames; and wearied and foot-sore they dropped at night on the spot where the last speck of twilight left them in darkness. Next morning they were early afoot, and onward they travelled in pursuit of what, so far, seemed an ignis fatuus. Resolved to win their spurs, they would not suffer despondency or gloom to cheat them of their expectations; and another morning had scarcely opened upon them when the reward of their endurance and exertion was within their grasp. It was on the 1st August, when, after rambling about the island for no less than six weeks, shaken and enfeebled by hunger, pain, toil, and frost, they fell in with a party of twelve seafaring men in the service of Mr. Geary of Cape Town. The meeting was one in which mutual amazement and happiness were keenly felt; and for the following thirty-two days, no vessel having touched at the island, the Cape seamen generously shared with the adventurers their scanty stock of farina. Poor Goldsmith was still alive. The strangers carried him more than thirty miles to the cave on the south beach of the island in which they resided. One by one his toes dropped from his feet, and he perished on the 24th August. With every feeling of affection and sorrow for his unhappy fate, his comrades interred his remains on the spot where he ceased the mortal struggle. The schooner ‘Courier,’ of Cape Town, at length brought up at the island with a supply of provisions; and the survivors of the wreck, after seventy-two days’ sojourn in that bleak and desolate region, having embarked on board of her, landed at Table Bay on the 10th November, where they were gratefully welcomed and entertained by a party of the corps.[44]