When Robert Betts was driven off the Reef, by the hurricane of the preceding year, he had no choice but to let the Neshamony drive to leeward with him.  As soon as he could, he got the pinnace before the wind, and, whenever he saw broken water ahead, he endeavoured to steer clear of it.  This he sometimes succeeded in effecting; while at others he passed through it, or over it, at the mercy of the tempest.  Fortunately the wind had piled up the element in such a way as to carry the craft clear of the rocks, and in three hours after the Neshamony was lifted out of her cradle, she was in the open ocean, to leeward of all the dangers.  It blew too hard, however, to make sail on her, and Bob was obliged to scud until the gale broke.  Then, indeed, he passed a week in endeavouring to beat back and rejoin his friend, but without success, ‘losing all he made in the day, while asleep at night.’  Such, at least, was Bob’s account of his failure to find the Reef again; though Mark thought it probable that he was a little out in his reckoning, and did not look in exactly the right place for it.

At the end of this week high land was made to leeward, and Betts ran down for it, in the hope of finding inhabitants.  In this last expectation, however, he did not succeed.  It was a volcanic mountain, of a good many resources, and of a character not unlike that of Vulcan’s Peak, but entirely unpeopled.  He named it after his old ship, and passed several days on it.  On describing its appearance, and its bearings from the place where they then were, Mark had no doubt it was the island that was visible from the peak near them, and at which he had been gazing that very afternoon, for fully an hour with longing eyes.  On describing its form to Bob, the latter coincided in this opinion, which was in fact the true one.

From the highest point of Rancocus Island, land was to be seen to the northward and westward, and Bob now determined to make the best of his way in that direction, in the hope of falling in with some vessel after sandal-wood or beche-le-mar.  He fell in with a group of low islands, of a coral formation, about a hundred leagues from his volcanic mountain, and on them he found inhabitants.  These. people were accustomed to see white men, and turned out to be exceedingly mild and just.  It is probable that they connected the sudden appearance of a vessel like the Neshamony, having but one man in it, with some miraculous interposition of their gods, for they paid Bob the highest honours, and when he landed, solemnly tabooed his sloop.  Bob was a long-headed fellow in the main, and was not slow to perceive the advantage of such a ceremony, and encouraged it.  He also formed a great intimacy with the chief, exchanging names and rubbing noses with him.  This chief was styled Betto, after the exchange, and Bob was called Ooroony by the natives.  Ooroony stayed a month with Betto, when he undertook a voyage with him in a large canoe, to another group, that was distant two