Page:Melancholy consequences of two sea storms.pdf/7

(7) from the wheel to the ship's head. Soon the pumps were choaked, and could no longer be worked: then dismay seized on all-nothing but unutterable despair, silent anguish, and horror, wrought up to frenzy, was to be seen; not a single soul was capable of an effort to be useful-all seemed more desirous to extinguish their calamities by embracing death, than willing, by a painful exertion, to avoid it.

At about eleven o'clock they could plainly distinguish a dreadful roaring noise, resembling that waves rolling against rocks; but the darkness of the day, and the accompanying rains, prevented them from seeing any distance; and if it were a rock, they might be actually dashed to pieces on it before they could perceive it. At twelve o'clock, however, the weather cleared up a little and both the wind and the sea seemed to have abated: the ry expansion of the prospect round the ship was hilarating; and as the weather grew better, and the sea less furious, the senses of the people returning, and the general stupefaction began to decrease.

The weather continuing to clear up, they in some ne discovered breakers and large rocks without e of them: so that it appeared they must have passed quite close to them, and were now fairly mmed in between them and the land.

"In this very critical juncture," says our traveller, "the captain, entirely contrary to my opinion, adopted the dangerous resolution of letting go anchor, to bring her up with her head to the : but, though no seaman, my common sense d me that she could never ride it out, but must directly go down. The event nearly justified my judgment; for she had scarcely been an hor be e an enormous sea rolling over her,