“My latest guests were a crew of shipwrecked mariners, Americans, who landed on the island last June. A fortnight earlier the barometer here had been extraordinarily low, but we did not get much wind; further to the south, however, the gale was terrific, and the _El Dorado_ was in the midst of it. The captain, who had been a whaler in his day, said that he had never seen anything approaching it, the sea was simply a seething mass of crested waves. The ship was a schooner, trading between Oregon and a Chilean port; she was a long way from land, as sailing vessels make a big semicircle to get the best wind. She had a deck load of timber, 15 feet high, which of course shifted in such a sea; she sprang leaks in every direction, and it was obvious that she must soon break up. The crew took to their boat, not that they had much hope of saving their lives, but simply because there was nothing else to be done. They got some tins of milk and soup on board, and a box of biscuits, and a cask holding perhaps twenty gallons of water. The captain managed to secure his sextant, but when he went back for his chronometers, the chart-room was too deep in water for him to be able to reach them. They saw by the chart that the nearest land was this island: it was seven hundred miles off, and as they had no chronometer, and could take no risks, they would have to go north first in order to get their latitude, which would add on another two hundred. There was nothing for it, however, but to do the best they could; they had more gales too, and only saved the boat from being swamped by making a sea-anchor of their blankets. The spray of course kept washing over them, and as the boat was only 20 feet long and there were eleven of them, there was no room for them to lie down. Each day they had between them a tin of the soup and one of milk, and an allowance of water, but the sea got into the water-cask and made it brackish, and before the end their sufferings from thirst were so great that one or two of them attempted to drink salt water; the mate stopped that by saying that he would shoot the first man who did it. “After nine days they sighted this island, but then luck was against them, for the wind changed, and it was forty-eight hours, after they saw the coast, before they were able to beach the boat. They got on shore at the other end of the island, which is uninhabited. They were pretty much at the last stage of exhaustion, and their skin was in a terrible condition with salt water; their feet especially were so bad that they could hardly walk. One of them fell down again and again, but struggled on saying, ‘I won’t give up, I won’t give up.’ At last my man, who looks after the cattle over there, saw them and brought me word. The officers were put up here, you must really forgive the limitations of my wardrobe, for I had to give away nearly everything that I had in order to clothe them.