Albemarle Island (Galapagos group) lies straight eastward nearly a thousand miles; the islands referred to in the diary as ‘some islands’ (Revillagigedo Islands) lie, as they think, in some widely uncertain region northward about one thousand miles and westward one hundred or one hundred and fifty miles.  Acapulco, on the Mexican coast, lies about north-east something short of one thousand miles.  You will say random rocks in the ocean are not what is wanted; let them strike for Acapulco and the solid continent.  That does look like the rational course, but one presently guesses from the diaries that the thing would have been wholly irrational—­indeed, suicidal.  If the boats struck for Albemarle they would be in the doldrums all the way; and that means a watery perdition, with winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all points of the compass at once and also perpendicularly.  If the boats tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way there—­in case they ever got half-way—­and then they would be in lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not sail within eight points of the wind.  So they wisely started northward, with a slight slant to the west.  They had but ten days’ short allowance of food; the long-boat was towing the others; they could not depend on making any sort of definite progress in the doldrums, and they had four or five hundred miles of doldrums in front of them yet.  They are the real equator, a tossing, roaring, rainy belt, ten or twelve hundred miles broad, which girdles the globe.

It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up their water-butt.  The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who steered.  The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep.  ’Kept on our course till squalls headed us off.’

Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains.  A heavy and dangerous ‘cobbling’ sea.  One marvels how such boats could live in it.  Is it called a feat of desperate daring when one man and a dog cross the Atlantic in a boat the size of a long-boat, and indeed it is; but this long-boat was overloaded with men and other plunder, and was only three feet deep.  ’We naturally thought often of all at home, and were glad to remember that it was Sacrament Sunday, and that prayers would go up from our friends for us, although they know not our peril.’

The captain got not even a cat-nap during the first three days and nights, but he got a few winks of sleep the fourth night.  ’The worst sea yet.’  About ten at night the captain changed his course and headed east-north-east, hoping to make Clipperton Rock.  If he failed, no matter; he would be in a better position to make those other islands.  I will mention here that he did not find that rock.

On May 8 no wind all day; sun blistering hot; they take to the oars.  Plenty of dolphins, but they couldn’t catch any.  ’I think we are all beginning to realise more and more the awful situation we are in.’  ’It often takes a ship a week to get through the doldrums; how much longer, then, such a craft as ours?’ ’We are so crowded that we cannot stretch ourselves out for a good sleep, but have to take it any way we can get it.’