Bulkeley was seized by an idea. With their eventual new longboat and three small transport crafts, he thought, the castaways could cross through the strait and into the Atlantic, then head north to Brazil; its government, being neutral in the war, would surely provide them a safe haven and facilitate their passage back to England. The total distance from Wager Island to Brazil would be nearly three thousand miles. And Bulkeley conceded that many would deem it a “mad undertaking.” The strait was winding and narrow in places, and it often splintered into a bewildering maze of dead-end offshoots.
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