It appeared that, after parting from Mr. Hunter, he left the beach and pursued his walk among the trees; he had not proceeded more than fifty yards when he fired at a bird: he was cautious enough to reload before he moved from the spot in search of his game, but this was scarcely done before a boomerang* whizzed past his head, and struck a tree close by with great force. Upon looking round towards the verge of the cliff, which was about twenty yards off, he saw several natives; who upon finding they were discovered set up a loud and savage yell, and threw another boomerang and several spears at him, all of which providentially missed. Emboldened by their numbers and by his apparent defenceless situation, they were following up the attack by a nearer approach, when he fired amongst them, and for a moment stopped their advance. Mr. Roe's next care was to reload, but to his extreme mortification and dismay he found his cartouch box had turned round in the belt and every cartridge had dropped out: being thus deprived of his ammunition, and having no other resource left but to make his escape, he turned round and ran towards the beach; at the same time shouting loudly to apprize our people of his danger. He was now pursued by three of the natives, whilst the rest ran along the cliff to cut off his retreat.
(*Footnote. See Note above [re boomerang].)
On his reaching the edge of the water, he found the sand so soft that at every step his feet sunk three or four inches, which so distressed him and impeded his progress that he must soon have fallen overpowered with fatigue had not the sudden appearance of our people, at the same time that it inspired him with fresh hopes of escape, arrested the progress of the natives, who, after throwing two or three spears without effect, stopped and gave him time to join our party, quite spent with the extraordinary effort he had made to save his life.
Whilst this event occurred I was employed on board in constructing my rough chart, but upon Mr. Roe's being seen from the deck in the act of running along the beach pursued by the Indians, I hastened on shore, determined if possible to punish them for such unprovoked hostility. Upon landing, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Roe, and one of the men joined me in pursuit of the natives; but from our comparatively slow movements and our ignorance of the country, we returned after an hour without having seen any signs of them; in the evening before our people left off work we made another circuitous walk, but with the same bad success. The natives had taken the alarm and nothing more was seen of them during the remainder of our stay, excepting the smokes of their fires which appeared over the trees at the back of the island.
Previous to this attack upon Mr. Roe the natives had probably been following Mr. Hunter; and were doubtless deterred from attacking him by witnessing the destructive effects of his gun among a flight of cockatoos, five or six of which he brought away, and left as many more hopping about the grass wounded and making the woods re-echo with their screams. When Mr. Hunter parted from Mr. Roe the natives remained to watch the latter gentleman; and no sooner had he discharged his gun, which they found was of no use until it was reloaded, than they commenced their attack; and from the known dexterity of the natives of this country in throwing the spear it was not a little surprising that they missed him so repeatedly.
Before we embarked for the night I walked with Mr. Roe to the place where he was attacked, in order to look for the spears that had been thrown at him and for the cartridges he had lost; but as neither were found, we were revengeful enough to hope that the natives would burn their fingers with the powder, an event not at all unlikely to occur, from their ignorance of the dangerous effect of placing the cartridges near the fire, which they would be sure to do.
During our visit we were fortunate in having very fine weather; and although it was very hazy we did not experience that excessive heat which, from the advanced state of the season, had been expected. The thermometer ranged between 73 and 83 degrees; but the regularity and strength of the sea-breezes tended materially to keep the air cool and pleasant.
August 25.
On the 25th the gentlemen visited Sims' Island, where they found a considerable quantity of fresh water in holes that had apparently been dug for the purpose by the Malays. Among the insects which they brought back with them was a very fine species of cimex; it was found in great numbers upon the foliage of Hibiscus tiliaceus.
In the evening we left the bay.