Next day Dampier and his associates purchased a canoe, and passed over to the south end of the island, where they victualled their little boat with fruit loaves, cocoa-nuts, and fresh water, so that when the monsoon came on to blow they might be in readiness to sail for Acheen. It is consistent that a man who had traversed on foot the dangerous and poisonous Isthmus of Panama should parallel that accomplishment by a remarkable boat-voyage. The craft was a canoe of the size of a London wherry, deeper but not so broad, sharp after the whaling pattern at both ends, and so thin and light that when empty four men could lift her. She carried a mat-sail, and outriggers to prevent her from capsizing. In this little ark Dampier and his shipmates embarked—eight men, four of whom were Malays—and started for Acheen on May 15th, 1688. The breezes were light, the atmosphere sultry. Sometimes they rowed, sometimes left the sail to do its work, but at the end of two days, to their great mortification, they found the Island of Nicobar still in sight a little over twenty miles distant. On the 18th they remarked a great circle round the sun, an appearance that caused Dampier to suppose that bad weather was at hand. His foreboding was true; wind and sea rose, and but for the outriggers the canoe must have been swamped. Still the gale freshened, and there was nothing for it but to scud. There occurs here a characteristic passage. It reads like an extract from _Robinson Crusoe_, and nothing in all Dampier so conclusively proves the source whence Defoe drew the colours which he employed in the composition of his chief and most engaging work.