As the ship went along she raised prodigious numbers of flying-fish in large schools, closely watched by frigate-birds, boobies, and terns.
UNABLE TO FIND ANCHORAGE.
The afternoon was ineffectually spent in searching for an anchorage, the pinnace and one of the cutters having been sent inshore for that purpose.
In the evening the anchor was let go after a cast of fifty fathoms, but slipped off the bank, and had to be hove up again.

In company with the Bramble we passed the night in standing off and on the islands, directed by bright moonlight, and a fire on the westernmost of the group which the pinnace's people had been sent in to make.
The following day was spent in a similar manner, and with the like result.

The Bramble, when ordered by signal to point out the anchorage which Lieutenant Yule had found a week before, at once passed through an opening in the northern margin of the reef connected with the Duperre Isles, and brought in the smooth and moderately deep water inside, but it was not judged safe for us to follow, so the pinnace was hoisted in-board, and the ship kept underweigh all night.
August 6th.
We passed out to sea to the southward by a wide and clear channel between the Duperre and Jomard Islands.

The former are five in number, all uninhabited, small, low, and thickly covered with trees.

They extend over a space of about six miles on the northern margin of a large atoll or annular reef extending eleven miles in one direction and seven in another, with several openings leading into the interior, which forms a navigable basin afterwards called Bramble Haven.