The next day our people were employed in setting up more tents, getting the water-casks on shore, and clearing the well at which they were to be filled. This well I imagined to be the same that the Centurion watered at; but it was the worst that we had met with during the voyage, for the water was not only brackish, but full of worms. The Road also where the ships lay was a dangerous situation at this season, for the bottom is hard sand and large coral rocks, and the anchor having no hold in the sand, is in perpetual danger of being cut to pieces by the coral; to prevent which as much as possible, I rounded the cables, and buoyed them up with empty water casks. Another precaution also was taught me by experience, for at first I moored, but finding the cables much damaged, I resolved to lie single for the future, that by veering away or heaving in, as we should have more or less wind, we might always keep them from being slack, and consequently from rubbing, and this expedient succeeded to my wish. At the full and change of the moon, a prodigious swell tumbles in here, so that I never saw ships at anchor roll so much as ours did while we lay here; and it once drove in from the westward with such

Voyaging Accounts