Seeing, therefore, that we could do no good by remaining here, we started back for Herschel Island to rejoin our companions, getting there before it was dark—much to our own relief and to that of Mr Macdougall, who was anxiously looking out for us.
For another fortnight we remained here, experiencing the utmost privation, for our stock of provisions gradually dwindled down, our two-biscuit ration being reduced to one, then to half-a-one a day, and then to none at all, when all of us had to eat berries with the little piece of salt pork served out to us, and an occasional fish that we sometimes succeeded in catching in the native fashion.
At last, at the beginning of September, the skipper determined that all hands should put to sea again in the two boats, in order to make our way across the intervening gulf of water to Good Success Bay, at the extreme south-east point of Tierra del Fuego, opposite to Staten Island, on the other side of the Strait of Le Maire.
This plan was adopted, and we launched the boats, now much lighter than when they originally had left the poor Esmeralda, for they had nothing now to carry but ourselves, save water, our provisions being all exhausted.
For three days and nights we suffered terribly from hunger, besides being buffeted about by adverse winds; but, happily, the fourth morning brought us relief, although we had not yet got in sight of Staten Island.
Far away on the horizon, on our starboard hand, Jorrocks saw a ship standing to the westward; so, rigging up the long-boat’s sails again—for the wind was contrary to the course we had been trying to fetch, and we had hauled them down in despair, allowing the boats to drift about on the ocean without heart or energy—we made a board to the south, so as to cut off the vessel as she steered towards Cape Horn, taking the jolly-boat in tow behind us, for she spread such little canvas that she could not keep up with the larger boat.
Fortunately, the wind held, and the ship did not change her course; so, about mid-day, we came up with her.
She was a London vessel, the Iolanthe, bound to Valparaiso; so her captain, seeing that we were shipwrecked mariners in distress, took us on board at once, and treated us like brothers, without waiting even to hear our story about the loss of the Esmeralda.
In thirty days more we were landed at Valparaiso.
Here, by rights, I ought to finish my yarn, for I said when I began that I was only going to give a full, fair, and truthful statement as to how I came to go to sea, and of my escape, just by “the skin of my teeth,” as the saying goes, from the perils of the ocean off Cape Horn on this first voyage; and now, as the Esmeralda got burnt and her keel and bottom timbers are lying beneath the waves—the catastrophe terminating, of course, my voyage in her, to which this story only refers—what relates to myself further on is of no concern to any one!