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During our search for water at this island we were attacked by the savages and barely escaped with our lives, one of our number, John Norton, a quartermaster, being killed as he attempted to recover the launch’s grapnel.

After considering our melancholy situation, I was earnestly solicited by all hands to take them toward home; and when I told them that no hope of relief remained for us until we came to Timor, a distance of 1200 leagues, they all agreed to live upon one ounce of bread per man each day, and one gill of water. Therefore, after recommending this promise forever to their memory, I bore away for New Holland and Timor, across a sea but little known, and in a small boat laden with 18 souls, without a single map of any kind, and nothing but my own recollection and general knowledge of the situation of places to direct us.

After enduring dangers and privations impossible to describe, we sighted Timor on the 12th of June, and on the morning of the 15th, before daylight, I anchored under the fort at the Dutch settlement at Coupang. This voyage in an open boat I believe to be unparalleled in the history of Navigation.