THE FISHERS 01' STOTFIELD. 327 



remainder of the clay there was nothing to be seen or heard there 

 but the visible and outward signs of that grief which pressed with 

 so powerful a force oti the hearts of their bereaved inmates. The 

 voice of lamentation, emphatically speaking, was heard resounding 

 from every abode, in accents loud and affecting enough to have 

 superinduced a feeling of tenderness and heartfelt sympathy in the 

 breasts of any one in the composition of whose nature there was a 

 particle of humanity. \\ hat a striking illustration did Stotfield that 

 day furnish of the beauty and force of that scripture passage which 

 represents Rachel in the attitude of weeping for her children, 

 and "refusing to be comforted because they were not." Night came ; 

 but to the widowed, and fatherless, and brotherless villagers of Slot- 

 field, it was a doleful night indeed. It was one of pitchy darkness. 

 The rains too descended in copious torrents, while the winds blew 

 with great fury, producing altogether an effect which was in melan- 

 choly keeping with the overwhelming sorrow which pressed on the 

 heart of every surTiving villager. The plaintive meanings of tlie 

 winds, and the heavy rains which fell in such rapid succession from 

 the heavens, were so strangely blended with the deep-fetched 

 sighings, the loud lamentations, and the gushing tears which streamed, 

 down their cheeks, that the human mind could not by possibility 

 picture to itself a scene irore mournfully affecting than the lately 

 happy village of Stotfield presented on this memorable night. 

 One would have thought, indeed, that Nature herself had be- 

 come repentant — had felt the agonies of deep contrition, when she 

 witnessed the amount of human woe which had been produced in so 

 circumscribed a space by the ravages on human life she had that day 

 so unfeelingly and so lavishly committed. And no wonder although 

 Nature had thus sorrowed at the scene of misery which the interior 

 of the cottages of Stotfield exhibited to her gaze on the night in 

 question. We do not overstep the limits of actual fact when we say 

 that sleep visited not the senses of one individual in the village, — that 

 not one eye closed for a moment during any part of the whole night. 

 So overwhelming was the measure of their sorrow, that they could 

 not even sufficiently compose themselves to recline on their beds. 

 As if the extent of their grief had verged on absolute distraction, 

 they alternately laid themselves on their couches, and arose and 

 paced their apartments until the approach of morning. Daylight, 

 after the lapse of a night which in length appeared to them like an 

 age, did at last come ; and such of them as were able to travel the 

 distance went down with many of the inhabitants of Lossiemouth to 

 the sea-side, in order that the rite of Christian sepulture might be 

 given to such of the bodies as had been washed ashore. Seven were 

 found that morning, and the remainder in the course of that and the 

 two following days. 



Among the first seven was the body of the young man who has 

 been already mentioned as the one who caught hold of and clung to 

 the keel of the first boat after it had been upset, and who, at the 

 very moment of his being swept off for ever by a tremendous surge, 

 had made an expressive wafture of his right hand, as if bidding a 

 final earthly adieu to those on the shore who were doomed to be the 



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