I kept on sailing in hope, since I had no choice but to go on, heading across for St.Nicholas Bay, where I had cast anchor February 19.

It was now the 10th of March! Upon reaching the bay the second time I had circumnavigated the wildest part of desolate Tierra del Fuego.

But the _Spray_ had not yet arrived at St.Nicholas, and by the merest accident her bones were saved from resting there when she did arrive.

The parting of a staysail-sheet in a williwaw, when the sea was turbulent and she was plunging into the storm, brought me forward to see instantly a dark cliff ahead and breakers so close under the bows that I felt surely lost, and in my thoughts cried, "Is the hand of fate against me, after all, leading me in the end to this dark spot ?" I sprang aft again, unheeding the flapping sail, and threw the wheel over, expecting, as the sloop came down into the hollow of a wave, to feel her timbers smash under me on the rocks.

But at the touch of her helm she swung clear of the danger, and in the next moment she was in the lee of the land.
[Illustration: A glimpse of Sandy Point (Punta Arenas) in the Strait of Magellan.] It was the small island in the middle of the bay for which the sloop had been steering, and which she made with such unerring aim as nearly to run it down.