As Newton had foreseen, the ebb-tide was soon over; a short pause of “slack water” ensued, and there was an evident and rapid increase of the water around him:  the wind, too, freshened, and the surface of the ocean was in strong ripples.  As the water deepened, so did the waves increase in size:  every moment added to his despair.  He had now remained about four hours on the bank! the water had risen to underneath his arms, the waves nearly lifted him off his feet, and it was with difficulty that he could retain his position.  Hope deserted him, and his senses became confused.  He thought that he saw green fields, and cities, and inhabitants.  His reason was departing; he saw his father coming down to him with the tide, and called to him for help, when the actual sight of something recalled him from his temporary aberration.  There was a dark object upon the water, evidently approaching.  His respiration was almost suspended as he watched its coming.  At last he distinguished that it must either be a whale asleep, or a boat bottom up.  Fortunately for Newton, it proved to be the latter.  At last it was brought down by the tide to within a few yards of him, and appeared to be checked.  Newton dashed out towards the boat, and in a minute was safely astride upon it.  As soon as he had recovered a little from his agitation, he perceived that it was the very boat belonging to the brig, in which Jackson had so treacherously deserted and left him on the island!

At three o’clock it was high water, and at five the water had again retreated, so that Newton could quit his station on the bottom of the boat, and walk round her.  He then righted her, and discovered that the mast had been carried away close to the step, but, with the sail, still remained fast to the boat by the main-sheet, which had jammed on the belaying pin, so that it still was serviceable.  Everything else had been lost out of the boat, except the grapnel, which had been bent, and which hanging down in the water, from the boat being capsized, had brought it up when it was floated on the sand-bank.  Newton, who had neither eaten nor drunk since the night before, was again in despair, tormented as he was by insufferable thirst:  when he observed that the locker under the stern-sheets was closed.  He hastened to pull it open, and found that the bottles of wine and cider which he had deposited there were remaining.  A bottle of the latter was soon poured down his throat, and Newton felt as if restored to his former vigour.

At seven o’clock in the evening the boat was nearly high and dry.  Newton baled her out, and, fixing the grapnel firmly in the sand, lay down to sleep in the stern-sheets, covered over with the sail.  His sleep was so sound that he did not wake until six o’clock the next morning; when the boat was again aground.  He refreshed himself with some wine, and meditated upon his prospect.  Thanking Heaven for a renewed chance of escape, and lamenting over the fate of the unprepared Jackson, who had evidently been upset, from the main-sheet having been jammed, Newton resolved to make for one of the English isles, which he knew to be about two hundred miles distant.