TRANSCRIPTION
Overnight we found an extremely heavy South- easterly swell. The winds were then East to NorthEast, very variable and almost dead.
We thought we had seen the land to the West at midday, and we would surely have had a good view of it, had the horizon been clearer in that quarter.
In the afternoon all hands were ordered up on deck to clean the ship, and with good reason, for we had neglected to do it since leaving Adventure Bay. When we had finished, every part of the vessel was disinfected, including the hospital.
Most of the sick men were complaining loudly that by not seeking rest in some place where they could find relief, I wanted to bring about their death at sea. And so, without thought for the personal hardships to which I was submitting myself in order to give them fresh meat (which I could have eaten), they regarded me as the prime cause of their illnesses for having stayed too long at sea. The staff and scientists murmured likewise and blamed, if not me directly, at least the doctor, telling him all the time that he was misleading me as to the situation, the numbers and the indications that they would all die.
As I viewed the matter differently from all these gentlemen, I continued to keep the sea rather than be obliged to return a fourth time to this [coast], which, through their fault, was not worked on at the time when I was unfortunately sick and unable to take advantage of so favourable an opportunity as then offered, since we sailed along it three times from North to South and from South to North.
