In the mean time the hope of all these poor people lay in the building of a vessel out of the materials of the long-boat, with other timber added. This task was at last accomplished. Captain Cheap's plan was to seize a ship from the enemy, and to join the English squadron; but the majority of the hundred men, to which number starvation had reduced the castaways, were in favor of seeking a way home through the Straits of Magellan.
About this there arose a quarrel, and eventually the men threw off the Captain's authority altogether, left him on the island, and sailed away. A lieutenant of marines, Byron, and a few others remained with him. These were presently joined by some deserters who had settled on another portion of the island, so that their number now amounted to about twenty.
Their only chance of escape was in the barge and yawl, which in the absence of the carpenter were patched up so as to be fit for a fine-weather voyage. Even now their scanty stock of useful articles was diminished by theft, and two men were flogged by the Captain's orders, and one placed on a barren islet void of shelter. Two or three days later, on "going to the island with some little refreshment, such as their miserable circumstances would admit, and intending to bring him off, they found him stiff and dead."
All this time the weather was very tempestuous, but the occurrence of one fine day enabled them to hook up three casks of beef from the wreck, "the bottom of which only remained." These being equally divided, recruited for the time their lost health and strength.
On the 15th of December they embarked, twelve in the barge and eight in the yawl, and steered for a cape apparently about fifty miles away. But ere they reached it a heavy gale came on. The men were obliged to sit close together, to windward, in order to receive the seas on their backs, and prevent them from swamping the boats, and they were forced to throw everything overboard, including even the beef, to prevent themselves from sinking. As it was, the yawl was lost with half its crew.
The survivors, with the occupants of the barge, reached a small and swampy island, where bad weather confined them for days. There they ran along the coast, generally with nothing to eat but sea-tangle. At length they ate their very shoes, "which were of raw seal-skin."