savages," I answered.

"Then perhaps I may help you a little," he said. "Some time ago we fell
in with a whaler, and we were talking to her crew. At last, as we were
going to shove off, one of the men said that he had been on board the
_Helen_, and he knew for certain two of her boats had got safely to
Timor, but what became of the others he couldn't tell."

I naturally asked which of the boats had reached Timor, and whether the
captain's was one of them, but he could not say, and I was obliged to
rest satisfied with this information. It gave me fresh hopes that Jack
was alive.

I have not described the bay in which we lay. It was very deep and
narrow, and might rather have been called a gulf. Just as we got under
way the wind came right in, and we had either to anchor again or work
out. The captain decided to do the latter. Two boats were sent ahead
to tow the ship round, the rest of the crew were at their stations. Not
a word was spoken, for we all saw that we had no easy task to perform.
As we went about, first on one tack then on the other, we each time
gained but little ground.

At last, as we were just again going about, a puff of wind drove her
right ashore on a coral reef. In vain the men in the two boats
endeavoured to pull her round. The captain and both the mates gave her
up for lost, and the crew seemed to think the same, but Brown, who was
looking round everywhere, called me, and we hauled away at the fore
brace. The fore-topsail filled with a flaw of wind which came off the
shore, and away the ship went, the wind favouring us till we were clear
out of the bay. It was one of the narrowest escapes from shipwreck I
ever had.

The next land we made was "Boscawen" and "Keppel" Islands, the former
being a high peak, the latter a low, level island. We here landed to
obtain provisions, among which we got some of the finest yams I ever
saw. The natives were good-looking, friendly people.

We continued on to the north-west, and made the "Duke of Clarence"
Island, which has no land within four hundred miles of it. The captain
said that he had touched there years before, but that it was
uninhabited. As we were nearing it, however, a number of natives came
off in large canoes loaded with cocoanuts and fruits, so that they or
their fathers must have made a long voyage to reach it in their
frail-looking vessels.

Thence we proceeded to the Kingsmill group, of which Byron's Island is
the largest.