At last, on 4th August, they got away from the Endeavour River, only to find themselves surrounded by difficulties.  Cook or one of the other officers was continually at the masthead on the look-out, and at length, by keeping very close in shore, they managed to creep past Cape Flattery, and thought the worst was over, but a landing at Point Lookout showed a very unsatisfactory prospect.  In hopes of getting a better view Cook went out to Lizard Island, and from there could see, far away to the east, the white breakers on the Great Barrier Reef.  This island, on which the only living things to be seen were lizards, they found, from the large piles of shells and remains of fires, was visited periodically by the blacks; a remarkable voyage for their miserable canoes.

Having only three months’ supplies at short allowance left, Cook, after a consultation with his officers, made out through an opening in the Barrier Reef that he had seen from Lizard Island, and observes: 

“Having been entangled among Islands and Shoals more or less ever since the 26th May, in which time we have sailed 360 leagues by the Lead, without ever having a Leadsman out of the chains, when the ship was under sail, a Circumstance that perhaps never happened to any ship before, and yet it was here absolutely necessary.”

But their satisfaction in getting outside was diminished when it was found that the increased working of the ship’s timbers necessitated the continual use of one pump.

Cook was afraid that being forced outside the Barrier Reef he would be unable to put to the proof the opinion he had formed that New Guinea and New Holland were not joined.  He did not know till after his return to England, that the point had already been settled in 1606, by Louis Vaez de Torres, and he readily yields the honour of the discovery in the Introduction to his Second Voyage.  The log of Torres’s voyage was lost for many years, and was found at Manilla, when that place was taken by Admiral Cornish in 1762.  Cook had with him a copy of De Brye’s Voyages, published in 1756, which contained three charts that he found to be “tolerably good” with regard to New Guinea, and he evidently formed the opinion that both the Spaniards and the Dutch had circumnavigated that island.

“I always understood, before I had a sight of these maps, that it was unknown whether or no New Holland and New Guinea was one continued land, and so it is said in the very History of Voyages these maps are bound up in.  However, we have now put this wholly out of dispute; but as I believe it was known before, but not publickly, I claim no other merit than the clearing up of a doubtful point.”

With this question of New Guinea and New Holland in view, he again made to the west, sighting the Barrier again on 15th August, and on the following morning, the wind having changed in the night, the breakers were heard very distinctly.  The lead gave no bottom at 140 fathoms, but at daybreak the reef was not a mile away, and they found themselves in a dead calm, rapidly drifting with the current towards the breakers.  The yawl and long-boat were got out, the pinnace being under repair, and the sweeps were used from the gun-room ports.  By six o’clock she was heading north again, but: