23
fathoms, and caught ooze under Bircher's Island, which is from the former
island 10 leagues.

The nineteenth day in the morning, being calm, and no wind, the captain
and I took our boat, with eight men in her, to row us ashore, to see if
there were there any people, or no, and going to the top of the island,
we had sight of seven boats, which came rowing from the east side toward
that island; whereupon we returned aboard again. At length we sent our
boat, with five men in her, to see whither they rowed, and so with a
white cloth brought one of their boats with their men along the shore,
rowing after our boat, till such time as they saw our ship, and then they
rowed ashore. Then I went on shore myself, and gave every of them a
threaden point, and brought one of them aboard of me, where he did eat
and drink, and then carried him on shore again. Whereupon all the rest
came aboard with their boats, being nineteen persons, and they spake, but
we understood them not. They be like to Tartars, with long black hair,
broad faces, and flat noses, and tawny in colour, wearing seal skins, and
so do the women, not differing in the fashion, but the women are marked
in the face with blue streaks down the cheeks and round about the eyes.
Their boats are made all of seal skins, with a keel of wood within the
skin: the proportion of them is like a Spanish shallop, save only they be
flat in the bottom and sharp at both ends.

The twentieth day we weighed, and went to the east side of this island,
and I and the captain, with four men more, went on shore, and there we
saw their houses, and the people espying us, came rowing towards our
boat, whereupon we plied to our boat; and we being in our boat and they
ashore, they called to us, and we rowed to them, and one of their company
came into our boat, and we carried him aboard, and gave him a bell and a
knife; so the captain and I willed five of our men to set him ashore at a
rock, and not among the company which they came from, but their
wilfulness was such that they would go to them, and so were taken
themselves and our boat lost.

The next day in the morning we stood in near the shore and shot off a
fauconet, and sounded our trumpet, but we could hear nothing of our men.
This sound we called the Five Men's Sound, and plied out of it, but
anchored again in 30 fathoms and ooze; and riding there all night, in the
morning the snow lay a foot thick upon our hatches.

The two-and-twenti