revive, for we were still embayed in the reef; and the tide of ebb being spent, the tide of flood, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, again drove the ship into the bight. About this time, however, we saw another opening, near a mile to the westward, which I immediately sent the first lieutenant, Mr. Hicks, in the small boat to examine: in the mean time we struggled hard with the flood, sometimes gaining a little, and sometimes losing; but every man still did his duty, with as much calmness and regularity as if no danger had been near. About two o’clock Mr. Hicks returned, with an account that the opening was narrow and dangerous, but that it might be passed: the possibility of passing it was sufficient encouragement to make the attempt, for all danger was less imminent than that of our present situation. A light breeze now sprung up at E. N. E., with which, by the help of our boats, and the very tide of flood that, without an opening, would have been our destruction, we entered it, and were hurried through with amazing rapidity, by a torrent that kept us from driving against either side of the channel, which was not more than a quarter of a mile in breadth. While we were shooting this gulf, our soundings were from thirty to seven fathom, very irregular, and the ground at bottom very foul. As soon as we had got within the reef we anchored in nineteen fathom, over a bottom of coral and shells. And now, such is the vicissitude of life, we thought ourselves happy in having regained a situation, which but two days before it was the utmost object of our hope to quit. Rocks and shoals are always dangerous to the mariner, even where their situation has been ascertained; they are more dangerous in seas which have never before been navigated, and in this part of the globe they are more dangerous than in any other; for here they are reefs of coral rock, rising like a wall almost perpendicularly out of the unfathomable deep, always overflowed at highwater, and at low water dry in many places; and here the enormous waves of the vast Southern Ocean meeting with so abrupt a resistance, break, with inconceivable violence, in a surf which no rocks or storms in the northern hemisphere can produce. The danger of navigating unknown parts of this ocean was now greatly increased by our having a crazy ship, and being short of provisions and every other necessary; yet the distinction of a first discoverer made us cheerfully encounter every danger, and submit to every inconvenience; and we chose rather to incur the censure of imprudence and temerity, which the idle and voluptuous so liberally bestow upon unsuccessful fortitude and perseverance, than leave a country which we had discovered unexplored, and give colour to a charge of timidity and irresolution.