LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



of our Heavenly Father and retired to rest. It was a 

 night, however, of broken slumbers. 



" We hailed with delight and gratitude the dawn of 

 the approaching day. The wind, however, continued its 

 dreadful howlings, and, to increase our fears, one of our 

 anchors was gone. The men, with deathlike stillness and 

 a measured tread, as if marching to their own graves, 

 walked in the cable : it had separated at the anchor ring. 

 Another, one of our stern anchors, parted in the after- 

 noon ; the work of death seemed to be in rapid progress. 

 We were left with our bow anchor and one stern, the 

 latter useless as already explained, the former our only 

 dependence. No not our only dependence, for a God 

 that heard prayer still ruled, and the feeling pervaded the 

 ship that in Him was our only safety. True, it is so at 

 all times but how slow are we to think and feel it ! 



" Night came on again, and such a night! Early in 

 the evening the winds blew with fresh violence, and every 

 pitch of the ship was feared as the last. How anxiously 

 we followed her motion down as she plunged her head 

 into the water, and then watched her rising from those 

 depths, until with a sudden start she gained the summit 

 of the wave, and reeled and quivered at the length of her 

 straightened cable ! The anchor dragged more or less at 

 each of these heavy lurches, and the cable rumbled like 

 distant thunder upon the rocky bottom, it still rings in 

 my ears. Towards 9 P.M. our hopes were fast fading it 

 was evident our anchors must soon yield ; and in expecta- 

 tion of it, the crew, who had stood in readiness to jump 

 at the moment, were ordered on deck to wait the event. 

 The rumbling of the dragging chains became louder and 

 more frequent till at last it was almost an incessant peal 

 announcing that the dreaded crisis was fast approaching. 

 We dragged on, and as the wind slightly favored us, we 

 bid fair to escape the point of Noir Island and find our 

 grave among the Fury rocks; but when off the point the 

 veering wind drifted us to within half the ship's length 

 of the rocks. It was an anxious moment. We were 

 already in the breakers that swept over the reef : the ship 

 rose and fell a few times with the swell, and then rose 

 and careened as if half mad : her decks were deluged with 

 the sweeping waves, which poured in torrents down the 

 hatches. At this moment, with a sudden spring, she 



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