On the 15th day of July, 1858, we received a letter from President Brigham Young, stating that we were all of us released from our mission and called home to help protect the homes of the Saints. We therefore settled our business in Sidney, made a short visit to the country branches of the Church, appointed local Elders as presidents over them, bade them all farewell and returned again to Sidney. In a few days we all went on board a fine ship. The names of the American Elders besides myself that were returning were, A. J. Stewart, G. S. Clark, S. R. Chappin and J. H. Said. The night before the ship was to start nearly all the sailors took a boat and deserted, leaving the captain with only four seamen on board. When morning came the captain went on shore and succeeded in capturing and bringing back in irons three of the runaways. He then went among the passengers to see if he could hire hands to man the ship. I agreed to work for him as steward and had the direction of all the store of provision on board. This proved to be a great blessing to the Saints who were with us, as many of them were sick on the trip and I could administer to their wants. Previous to starting the captain loaded the ship with eleven hundred tons of New Castle coal, and this great weight caused the ship to draw twenty-four feet of water. As our captain was not much acquainted with the South Pacific seas, he concluded to sail south of the Society Islands. The first ten days of our voyage passed in peace and safety. Nothing happened to us or our good ship only that some of us were very sea-sick, but that soon left us. We had now traveled fifteen hundred miles and were passing the coast of New Zealand when a terrific storm came upon us from the north. During the whole night we drifted towards the land and next morning we could plainly see it. The wind was blowing a gale and the captain ordered the ship to be tacked many times, but it seemed that every tack brought us nearer the shore. The water could be seen flying upon the rocks a distance of many feet. The anchor was lowered, but it was useless as the ground could not be reached. The next order was to throw overboard the loading. All hands therefore went to work and we had soon emptied a hundred tons of our cargo into the sea. This made the ship ride the waves more safely. About this time the first mate asked us if we would not pray to God that the winds might be stayed or changed to another course. We told him that we had done our praying before starting from shore and now in times of peril we should watch and work. We did, however, ask our Father in heaven to change the winds and they immediately changed from the north to the south and just in time to save our good ship from striking that terrible rock called the King's Head, which towers four thousand feet above the sea. By evening we were out of sight of land and sailing along nicely towards our destination.