356 NAVIGATION. 



mv life to the will of tfee Almighty, to invoke his mercy and 

 protection towards those objects who were dearest to my 

 heart, and whom I had now left for ever. In a short time, 

 however, I felt myself very heavily struck and impelled by 

 the following surf; sometimes raised for an instant to tire 

 surface, and then precipitated agam to the bottom. These 

 tremendous surfs followed in quick succession, and to their 

 \ impulse, under God, we may all attribute the savmg our 

 ^ lives. Nothin<T could resist their power; hey swept us 

 away in their long train towards the shore, divesting us of 

 every possible means of self-caution, or of contnbutmg in 

 the least towards our ovm salvation ; leaving us m the wash 

 with barely sufficient power to crawl out and reach terra 

 frma, and like wretches more than half-drowned and with 

 bewildered senses, wondering by what means or accident 

 we had been saved." By about nine o'clock the whole of 

 the crew (excepting the captain and fourteen men, who were 

 drowned) had reached the rocks. Their prospects were to 

 all appearance most appalling and hopeless. Pso land— no- 

 thing but coral-banks and rocks to be seen in any direction, 

 and the very spot on which they stood rapidly disappeanng 

 under the rising tide. Will it be beheved that in this ex- 

 traordinarv situation, when just rescued from death, without 

 even waitin<T to know who was saved or who was drowned, 

 the whole of the seamen, regardless of their officers orders 

 or entreaties, and before the boat was rescued by means ot 

 which alone their future escape was practicable, commenced 

 the most childish and wanton pilfering among the goods 

 with which the rocks were strewed ! Every package was 

 broken open, not in search of food, but out of mere cunosity ; 

 and numbers possessed themselves of articles wholly useless 

 ' to men of their class of life anywhere, but more strikingly so 

 to forlorn shipwrecked mariners on a lone dreary sand-bank, 

 with scarcely dry ground to stand upon except at low water. 

 As wine, spirits, and beer came ashore with the rest of the 

 car<T0, drunkenness prevailed to a great extent ; all subordi- 

 natton was at an end ; all obedience ceased. A great many 

 casks of beer having been thrown upon a bank at some dis- 

 tance from the one on which the officers lived, most of the 

 crew went over and established themselves there, calling it 

 Beer Island ! Several pigs escaped alive, and lived prin- 

 cipally upon Windsor soap. Eight sheep also landed ahve, 



