like whipcord; our stockings
perhaps might have suffered still more, but we wore none. During this,
march we were also covered with flies from head to foot, and whenever we
offered to speak we were sure of having a mouthful, many of which never
failed to get down our throats. After we had walked about three or four
miles, we got sight of a bull, which we killed, and a little before
night got back to the beach, as wet as if we had been dipt in water, and
so fatigued that we were scarcely able to stand. We immediately sent out
a party to fetch the bull, and found that during our excursion some
tents had been got up, and the sick brought on shore.

The next day our people were employed in setting up more tents, getting
the water-casks on shore, and clearing the well at which they were to be
filled. This well I imagined to be the same that the Centurion watered
at; but it was the worst that we had met with during the voyage, for the
water was not only brackish, but full of worms. The road also where the
ships lay was a dangerous situation at this season, for the bottom is
hard sand and large coral rocks, and the anchor having no hold in the
sand, the cable is in perpetual danger of being cut to pieces by the
coral; to prevent which as much as possible, I rounded the cables, and
buoyed them up with empty water-casks. Another precaution also was
taught me by experience, for at first I moored, but finding the cables
much damaged, I resolved to lie single for the future, that by veering
away or heaving in, as we should have more or less wind, we might always
keep them from being slack, and consequently from rubbing, and this
expedient succeeded to my wish. At the full and change of the moon, a
prodigious swell tumbles in here, so that I never saw ships at anchor
roll so much as ours did while we lay here; and it once drove in from
the westward with such violence, and broke so high upon the reef, that I
was obliged to put to sea for a week; for if our cable had parted in the
night, and the wind had been upon the shore, which sometimes, happens
for two or three days together, the ship must have inevitably been lost
upon the rocks.

As I was myself very ill with the scurvy, I ordered a tent to be pitched
for me, and took up my residence on shore; where we also erected the
armourer's forge, and began to repair the iron-work of both the ships. I
soon found that the island produced limes, sour oranges, cocoa-nuts,
breadfruit,[42] g