When we threw the guns overboard, we fixed buoys to them, intending, if we escaped, to have heaved them up again, but, on attempting it, we found it was impracticable.
Soon after we arrived in the bay, we laid the ship on a steep bank, on the side of a river; set up tents on shore, unloaded her, carried all the cargo and provisions into them, and there lodged and accommodated our sick.
On the 22d, we examined the ship's bottom, and found a large hole; through the planks into the hold, which had a piece of coral-rock, half a yard square, sticking in it: the fame rock, therefore, that endangered us, yielded us the principal means of our redemption; for, had not this fragment intruded into the leak, in all probability the ship would have sunk.
We lost no time, but immediately set about repairing the ship's bottom, and in a few days made it found again. In the mean time, the boats were sent out, in search search of another passage, which they found, and returned to the ship on the 3d of July.