Cook was inclined to think it would be more prudent to return and seek another passage. But such a détour would have consumed too much time, and have retarded his arrival in the East Indies. Moreover there was an insurmountable obstacle to this course. Three months' provisions were all that remained.
The situation appeared desperate, and Cook decided to steer as far as possible from the coast, and to try and pass the exterior line of rocks. He soon found a channel, which shortly brought them to the open sea.
"So happy a change in the situation," says Kippis, "was received with delight. The English were full of it, and openly expressed their joy. For nearly three months they had been in perpetual danger. When at night they rested at anchor, the sound of an angry sea forced them to remember that they were surrounded by rocks, and that, should the cable break, shipwreck was inevitable. They had travelled over 360 miles, and were forced to keep a man incessantly throwing the line and sounding the rocks through which they navigated. Possibly no other vessel could furnish an example of such continued effort."
Had they not just escaped so terrible a danger, the English would have had cause for uneasiness in reflecting upon the length of way that remained to them across a sea but little known, upon a vessel which let in nine inches of water in an hour. With pumps out of repair and provisions almost consumed, the navigators only escaped these terrible dangers to be exposed on the 16th of April to a peril of equal magnitude.
Carried by the waves to a line of rocks above which the sea spray washed to a prodigious height, making it impossible to cast anchor; without a breath of wind, they had but one resource, to lower boats to tow the vessel off. In spite of the sailors' efforts the Endeavour was still only 100 paces from the reef, when a light breeze, so slight that under better circumstances no one would have noticed it, arose and disengaged the vessel. But ten minutes later it fell, the currents strongly returned, and the Endeavour was once more carried within 200 feet of the breakers.
After many unsuccessful attempts, a narrow opening was perceived.
"The danger it offered was less imminent than that of remaining in so terrible a situation," says the narrative. "A light breeze which fortunately sprang up, the efforts of the boats, and the tide, conveyed the ship to the opening, across which she passed with frightful rapidity. The strength of the current prevented the Endeavour from touching either shore of the channel, which, however, was but a mile in width, and extremely unequal in depth, giving now thirty fathoms, now only seven of foul bottom."
If we have lingered somewhat over the incidents of this voyage, it is because it was accomplished in unknown seas, in the midst of breakers and currents, which, sufficiently dangerous for a sailor when they are marked on a map, become much more so when, as was the case with Cook, since leaving the coast of New Holland, the voyage is made in the face of unknown obstacles, which all the instinct and keen vision of the sailor cannot always successfully surmount.
One last question remained to be solved,—
Were New Holland and New Guinea portions of one country? Were they divided by an arm of the sea, or by a strait?