of a storm began to threaten them; nothing was now desired but to return to the ship, but the thickness of the fog intercepting it from their sight, made the attempt little other than desperate.  By so many unforeseen accidents is prudence itself liable to be embarrassed!  So difficult is it, sometimes, for the quickest sagacity, and most enlightened experience, to judge what measures ought to be taken!  To trust another to sound an unknown coast, appeared to Drake folly and presumption; to be absent from his fleet, though but for an hour, proved nothing less than to hazard the success of all their labours, hardships, and dangers.

In this perplexity, which Drake was not more sensible of than those whom he had left in the ships, nothing was to be omitted, however dangerous, that might contribute to extricate them from it, as they could venture nothing of equal value with the life of their general.  Captain Thomas, therefore, having the lightest vessel, steered boldly into the bay, and taking the general aboard, dropped anchor, and lay out of danger, while the rest, that were in the open sea, suffered much from the tempest, and the Mary, a Portuguese prize, was driven away before the wind; the others, as soon as the tempest was over, discovering, by the fires which were made on shore, where Drake was, repaired to him.

Here, going on shore, they met with no inhabitants, though there were several houses or huts standing, in which they found a good quantity of dried fowls, and among them a great number of ostriches, of which the thighs were as large as those of a sheep.  These birds are too heavy and unwieldy to rise from the ground, but with the help of their wings run so swiftly, that the English could never come near enough to shoot at them.  The Indians, commonly, by holding a large plume of feathers before them, and walking gently forward, drive the ostriches into some narrow neck, or point of land, then, spreading a strong net from one side to the other, to hinder them from returning back to the open fields, set their dogs upon them, thus confined between the net and the water, and when they are thrown on their backs, rush in and take them.

Not finding this harbour convenient, or well stored with wood and water, they left it on the 15th of May, and, on the 18th, entered another much safer, and more commodious, which they no sooner arrived at, than Drake, whose restless application never remitted, sent Winter to the southward, in quest of those ships which were absent, and immediately after sailed himself to the northward, and, happily meeting with the Swan, conducted it to the rest of the fleet; after which, in pursuance of his former resolution, he ordered it to be broken up, reserving the iron-work for a future supply.  The other vessel, which they lost in the late storm, could not be discovered.