for six months, I
shall now proceed to relate all that occurred to us in that period,
resuming the narrative from the 18th of June, on which day the Tryal
sloop, having been driven out by a squall three days before, came
again to her moorings, on which day also we finished sending our sick
on shore, being about eight days after our first anchoring at this
island.

SECTION XII.

_Separate Arrivals of the Gloucester, and Anna Pink, at Juan
Fernandez, and Transactions at that Island during the Interval._

The arrival of the Tryal sloop at this island, so soon after we
came there ourselves in the Centurion, gave us great hopes of being
speedily joined by the rest of the squadron; and we were accordingly
for some days continually looking out, in expectation of their coming
in sight. After near a fortnight had elapsed without any of them
appearing, we began to despair of ever meeting them again, knowing, if
our ship had continued so much longer at sea, that we should every
man of us have perished, and the vessel, occupied only by dead bodies,
must have been left to the caprice of the winds and waves; and this we
had great reason to fear was the fate of our consorts, as every hour
added to the probability of these desponding suggestions. But, on the
21st of June, some of our people, from an eminence on shore, discerned
a ship to leeward, with her courses even with the horizon. They could,
at the same time, observe that she had no sails aboard, except her
courses and main-topsail. This circumstance made them conclude that it
must be one of our squadron, which had probably suffered as severely
in her sails and rigging as we had done. They were prevented, however,
from forming more definite conjectures concerning her; for, after
viewing her a short time, the weather grew thick and hazy, and she was
no longer to be seen.

On this report, and no ship appearing for some days, we were all under
the greatest concern, suspecting that her people must be under the
utmost distress for want of water, and so weakened and diminished in
numbers by sickness, as to be unable to ply up to windward, so that we
dreaded, after having been in sight of the island, that her whole crew
might yet perish at sea. On the 21st, at noon, we again discerned a
ship at sea in the N.E. quarter, which we conceived to be the same
that had been seen before, and our conjecture proved true. About one
o'clock she had come so near that we could plainly disting