Cook has been much blamed for permitting this scene, which took place on board; but there had been so much disputing in England as to the possibility of the fact, that he could not resist the opportunity of putting it beyond a doubt.
It was, however, to be shortly proved in a much more horrible manner, for the Adventure, which only arrived at Queen Charlotte's Sound after the Resolution left, had a boat's crew attacked, overpowered, and eaten by the natives.

The circumstances were never wholly known, as not a man escaped; but the cooked remains were found, the natives decamping as the search-party approached.
Cook sailed south on November 25th, 1773, and was soon again battling with the ice, into which he pushed as far as was safe with as much hardihood as if he had still had the second ship with him.

He gained the latitude of 67 degrees south, and worked eastward, searching religiously for land--which, needless to say, he never found--his ropes frozen, and sails like, as he says, plates of metal.

Whatever the feelings of others on board were, Cook never flinched from every effort to get south, penetrating in one place to 71 degrees south, where he was stopped by dense pack, until he found himself nearly in the longitude of Tierra del Fuego, when, satisfied that no Southern Continent existed in the Pacific, he, on February 6th, steered north, to continue exploration in more genial weather and more profitable latitudes.

All this time there was no scurvy, and very little sickness of any kind; an indisputable proof of the untiring supervision Cook exercised over the health of his men.