Whilst this work was going on, parties were often sent inland to try to get provisions, but very little could be found. Curious-looking animals were seen, and some were afterwards shot, which Mr. Banks learned from the natives were called kangaroos. This was the first time that kangaroos had ever been seen by white men.

On 6th July the repairs to the ship were finished, as far as it was possible to do them. She was refloated, and her water, and stores, and remaining guns were got on board during the next few days.

Where the Endeavour  was beached the town of Cooktown now stands. Twenty years ago the people of that town tried, without any success, to recover from the sea the brass guns that were thrown over-board when the ship was on the reef.

On the 9th the master, who had been out to sea in a boat trying to find a channel for the Endeavour  to sail through, came back bringing three turtles weighing 791 lbs., and all hands had a feast. Except fish, the crew had now been without fresh meat for four months, so this must have been a great treat to them.

On the 18th and 19th several natives came on board and appeared to be very friendly; but they wanted to take ashore with them two turtles which had been caught, and which were on the deck. When this was refused, they became sulky and troublesome, and soon left the ship. Afterwards, when Cook was on shore, one of them took a handful of dry grass, and lighting it at a fire, ran round the party in a wide circle, everywhere setting a light to the grass. This started a great bush fires which went raging away amongst the trees and some of the ship's stores were burned. Luckily, very little had been left ashore. The natives also did the same thing round the place where the ship's nets and linen were spread out to dry, and Cook was obliged to fire at them with small shot before they would stop trying to burn him out.

It was not until the 4th August that the Endeavour  got away from this spot, and as she kept groping her way up the coast, many times she was in the greatest danger.

At last, on 16th August, there came a time when it did not seem possible to save her. During the night the wind fell to a dead calm, and though no bottom could be found when sounding even at a depth of more than 800 feet, the roaring of surf could be plainly heard at no great distance, At dawn, great, foaming breakers were seen not a mile from the ship, and she was drifting down fast into them. There was no possibility of anchoring in water so deep, and though the boats were got out and the ship's head pulled round away from the breakers, she still continued to drift down, and soon she was less than a hundred yards from them. In his journal, Cook writes, "The same sea that washed the side of the ship rose in a breaker prodidgiously high the very next time it did rise, so that between us and destruction was only a dismal valley the breadth of one wave, and even now no ground could be felt with 120 fathom" (720 feet).

No one who has not seen a coral reef, and the sea breaking over it, can know how grand and terrible is the sight, how awful the roar and thunder of the furiously breaking sea. Nothing that gets into it can live, and the vessel that is flung on such a reef is smashed to matchwood in less than a minute.

When the Endeavour  had drifted so near that to everybody it seemed that they had but a few minutes to live, a light air was felt, hardly enough to fill the sails. The men in the boats towing her pulled for their lives, and slowly she widened her distance from the breakers. For the moment she was saved.

But again the same fearful time had to be gone through. Again the wind died away, and once more she drifted towards the hungry breakers. At last, but not until the next day, a steady breeze sprang up, and she slipped through a narrow opening in the reef, and anchored in quiet water.

From now onwards Cook had a boat going constantly ahead of the Endeavour, looking out for shallow water. In this way he slowly rounded the most northerly point of Australia, which he named Cape York, and felt his way along Endeavour  Strait, between what is now known as Thursday Island and the mainland.

By this voyage Cook proved that New Guinea did not form part of New Holland, (an error into which all the maps of that time fell;) but he thought that probably islands or reefs extended all the way from Endeavour  Strait to New Guinea, which is not far from the truth.

It is curious to read in Cook's Journal his opinion of New Holland—or Australia, as we now call it. Though he saw but a fringe of the coast, and landed seldom, it shows how correct was his judgment to find him saying, ". . . It can never be doubted but that most sorts of grains, fruits, roots, &c., of every kind would flourish here were they once brought hither . . . and here are provender for more cattle at every season of the year than can ever be brought into the country."

On 25th August the Endeavour  quitted the Australian coast, heading for New Guinea, which she sighted on the 29th, after at least one very narrow escape from total loss on a reef. Everywhere along this part of the coast the water was very shallow, and it was not until 3rd September that Cook landed. Many natives were seen, all hostile, and Cook did not think it worth while to waste time in New Guinea. Provisions were now very short, and he wanted to get to Batavia, in Java, where he expected to get supplies from the Dutch.

On the way to that port, the Endeavour  sighted the little known island of Savu. Here he landed, and after much haggling with the Dutch Governor he bought seven buffaloes and many fowls, a supply of food of which his crew stood in great need.

On l0th October the ship anchored at Batavia, without one single man on the sick list, a record for those days most extraordinary. "Lieutenant Hicks, Mr. Green, and Tupia," Cook says in his Journal, "were the only people who had any complaint occasioned by a long continuance at sea." Never before had a vessel been known to come through a long voyage without many of the crew dying of scurvy. And to Cook's constant care of his men, of their, and of the ship's, cleanliness, and of their food, this was due.

But at Batavia his luck in that respect deserted him.

The ship remained at that port, being repaired, until 26th December, on which date she sailed for the Cape of Good Hope with upwards of forty sick on board. The rest of the crew also were in a feeble state, all having been down with fever, except the sailmaker, an old man of over seventy, who, Cook says, "was more or less drunk every day."

In all, during the voyage, the Endeavour  lost, from all causes, thirty-eight men out of her total of ninety-five. Of these, thirty died at, or after leaving, Batavia. On 24th January 1771, at sea, Corporal Trusslove died; on 25th, Mr. Sporing; 27th, Mr. Parkinson and Ravenhill, the old sailmaker; on 29th, Mr. Green; 30th, Moody and Hake, two of the crew; and on the 31st four more of the crew died. And so it went on. Tupia and his boy had died at Batavia, and later, Lieutenant Hicks died at sea.

The Cape of Good Hope was reached on 14th March, and here she remained till 15th April, when she sailed for England.

On Saturday, 13th July 1771, the Endeavour  once more dropped anchor in the Downs.