ALARMING POSITION AND PROSPECTS.  REPAIR DAMAGES, AND RETURN TO THE MAIN.

The safety of the whole party now depended upon my forming a prompt and efficient plan of operations, and seeing it carried out with energy and perseverance.  As soon as I was out of sight of Mr. Smith and Coles I sat down upon a rock on the shore to reflect upon our present position.  The view seawards was discouraging; the gale blew fiercely in my face and the spray of the breakers was dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear.  I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and but three plans presented themselves to me:  first, to leave a notice of my intentions on the island, then to make for some known point on the main and there endeavour to subsist ourselves until we should be found and taken off by the Colonial schooner; secondly, to start for Timor or Port Essington; thirdly, to try to make Swan River in the boats.

CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION.

I determined not to decide hastily between these plans and, in order more fully to compose my mind, I sat down and read a few chapters in the Bible.

By the influence these imparted I became perfectly contented and resigned to our apparently wretched condition and, again rising up, pursued my way along the beach to the party.  It may be here remarked by some that these statements of my attending to religious duties are irrelevant to the subject, but in such an opinion I cannot at all coincide.  In detailing the sufferings we underwent it is necessary to relate the means by which those sufferings were alleviated; and after having, in the midst of perils and misfortunes, received the greatest consolation from religion, I should be ungrateful to my Maker not to acknowledge this, and should ill perform my duty to my fellow men did I not bear testimony to the fact that, under all the weightier sorrows and sufferings that our frail nature is liable to, a perfect reliance upon the goodness of God and the merits of our Redeemer will be found a sure refuge and a certain source of consolation.

In pursuing my route along the beach I carefully examined every heap of seaweed which the waves had thrown up, and was fortunate enough to find a bag of flour which had been washed up by the tide and held there by some rocks; though from daily soaking in salt water for several weeks it was quite spoilt and fermented, and smelt like beer; yet this, under present circumstances, was more valuable than its weight in gold.  Just after I had found this bag, I met Ruston and another man coming from the boats to the depot; I at once told them exactly how matters stood; they bore the announcement better than I could have hoped for, and when I showed them that their safety altogether depended on their good conduct they promised the most implicit obedience and a ready cheerful demeanour.  I must do Ruston the justice to say that under every trial he most scrupulously adhered to the promise he then made, and never infringed upon it in the slightest degree.