She was soon alongside, when the mate in command addressed us, by presuming that we had met with some misfortune and lost our ship. This being answered in the affirmative, I requested to know the name of his vessel, and expressed our wish to be taken aboard. I was answered that it was ‘the Isabella of Hull, once commanded by Captain Ross’; on which I stated that I was the identical man in question, and my people the crew of the Victory. That the mate, who commanded this boat, was as much astonished at this information as he appeared to be, I do not doubt; while, with the usual blunderheadedness of men on such occasions, he assured me that I had been dead two years. I easily convinced him, however, that what ought to have been true, according to his estimate, was a somewhat premature conclusion; as the bear-like form of the whole set of us might have shown him, had he taken to consider, that we were certainly not whaling gentlemen, and that we carried tolerable evidence of our being ‘true men, and no impostors,’ on our backs, and in our starved and unshaven countenances. A hearty congratulation followed of course, in the true seaman style, and, after a few natural inquiries, he added that the Isabella was commanded by Captain Humphreys; when he immediately went off in his boat to communicate his information on board; repeating that we had long been given up as lost, not by them alone, but by all England. [Ross, pp. 720-721.]