Page:Life and unparalleled voyages and adventures of Ambrose Gwinnett (1).pdf/21

 We weighed anchor on the 3d of August, and for three days had excellent weather; but, on the fourth, a storm began to threaten, and the symptoms still increasing, by midnight such a hurricane was raised between heaven and earth as I never was witness to. About three o’clock, we were obliged to heave the ship under her bare poles, and the sea ran so exceedingly high, that we could not venture to keep any lights aboard, though the night was so dark that we could scarcely see one another at a quarter of a yard’s distance; the wind still increasing, the main-mast sprang about six feet from the deck, so that nothing could save it. We now began to feel the consequence of lading the vessel too deeply. The first thing we threw overboard were our guns; and, as our ease became more and more desperate, everything followed them, not cxcepting the chests of treasure. Thus I was once more rcduced to my original state of poverty. As daylight appeared, the storm abated. We then, as well as we were able, erected jury-masts, and, in about three hours, managed with the greatest difficulty to get the vessel under sail.

I was then standing by the man at the wheel, leaning against the mizen-mast, returning God thanks in my own mind for our amazing escape, when the boatswain came up to me, and said, egad, Mr Gwinnett, you have brought us into a pretty hole here; if it had not been for you, we should not have taken this trip, and lost the substance we have been working for so many years, but you loop too, I assure you. I asked him what he meant? He said he would soon let me see; upon which he and two or three others came behind me, seized me by the nape of the neck and the waistband of the breeches, and forced me over the rails of the quarterdeck into the sca.

The shock of the fall, and the maze I was in from sueh unexpected treatment, almost bercaved me of my senses. I endeavoured, however, to keep myself