Next day, the weather proving very bad, all hands went ashore to procure some sustenance, except two in each boat, which were left as boat-keepers:  this office we took by turns, and it was now my lot to be upon this duty with another man.  The yawl lay within us at a grapnel; in the night it blew very hard, and a great sea tumbled in upon the shore; but being extremely fatigued, we in the boats went to sleep:  notwithstanding, however, I was at last awakened by the uncommon motion of the boat, and the roaring of the breakers every where about us.  At the same time I heard a shrieking, like to that of persons in distress; I looked out, and saw the yawl canted bottom upwards by a sea, and soon afterwards disappeared.  One of our men, whose name was William Rose, a quarter-master, was drowned; the other was thrown ashore by the surf, with his head buried in the sand, but by the immediate assistance of the people on shore, was saved.  As for us in the barge, we expected the same fate every moment, for the sea broke a long way without us.  However, we got her head to it, and hove up our grapnel, or should rather say kellick, which we had made to serve in the room of our grapnel, hove overboard some time before to lighten the boat.  By this means we used our utmost efforts to pull her without the breakers some way, and then let go our kellick again.  Here we lay all the next day in a great sea, not knowing what would be our fate.  To add to our mortification, we could see our companions in tolerable plight ashore, eating seal, while we were starving with hunger and cold.  For this month past we had not known what it was to have a dry thread about us.

The next day being something more moderate, we ventured in with the barge as near as we could to the shore, and our companions threw us some seals liver, which having eat greedily, we were seized with excessive sickness, which affected us so much that our skin peeled off from, head to foot.

Whilst the people were on shore here, Mr Hamilton met with a large seal or sea-lion, and fired a brace of balls into him, upon which the animal turned upon him open-mouthed; but presently fixing his bayonet, he thrust it down its throat, with, a good part of the barrel of the gun, which the creature bit in two seemingly with as much ease as if it had been a twig.  Notwithstanding the wounds it received, it eluded all farther efforts to kill it, and got clear off.

I call this animal a large seal or sea-lion, because it resembles a seal in many particulars; but then it exceeds it so much in size, as to be sufficiently determined, by that distinction only, to be of another species.  Mr Walter, in Lord Anson’s voyage, has given a particular description of those which are seen about Juan Fernandes; but they have in other climates different appearances as well as different qualities, as we had occasion to observe in this and a late voyage I made.  However, as so much already has been said of the sea-lion, I shall only mention