On the third cruise there were a few adventures more directly touching the “Rattlesnake.”  Twice the landing parties, including Huxley, were within an ace of coming to blows with the islanders of the Louisiades, and on one occasion a portly member of the gun-room, being cut off by these black gentry, only saved his life by parting with all his clothes as presents to them, and keeping them amused by an impromptu dance in a state of nature under the broiling sun, until a party came to his relief.  At Cape York also, a white woman was rescued who had been made prisoner by the blacks from a wreck, and had lived among them for several years.  Here, too, Huxley and Macgillivray made a trip inland, and were welcomed by a native chief, who saw in the former the returning spirit of his dead brother.

Throughout the voyage Huxley was busy with his pencil, and many lithographs from his drawings illustrate the account of the voyage afterwards published.  As to his scientific work, he was accumulating a large stock of observations, but felt rather sore about the papers which he had already sent home, for no word had reached him as to their fate, not even that they had been received or looked over by Forbes, to whom they had been consigned.  As a matter of fact, they had not been neglected, as he was to find out on his return; but meanwhile the state of affairs was not reassuring to a man whose dearest hopes were bound up in the reception he could win for these and similar researches.  Altogether, it was with no little joy that he turned his back on the sweltering heat of Torres Straits, on the great mountains of New Guinea, the Owen Stanley range, which had remained hidden from D’Urville in the “Astrolabe” to be discovered by the explorers on the “Rattlesnake,” and the far stretching archipelago of the Louisiades, one tiny island in which still bears the name of Huxley, after the assistant-surgeon of the “Rattlesnake.”

A few extracts from letters of the time will give a more vivid idea of what the voyage was like.  The first is from a letter to his mother, dated February 1, 1849:—­]

...I suppose you have wondered at the long intervals of my letters, but my silence has been forced.  I wrote from Rockingham Bay in May, and from Cape York in October.  After leaving the latter place we have had no communication with any one but the folks at Port Essington, which is a mere military post, without any certain means of communication with England.  We were ten weeks on our passage from Port Essington to Sydney and touched nowhere, so that you may imagine we were pretty well tired of the sea by the time we reached Port Jackson.

Thank God we are now safely anchored in our old quarters, and for the next three months shall enjoy a few of those comforts that make life worth the living...