bar into twenty feet water, and all on board could have been saved.  She struck rather sidewise than bows on, canted on her side and stuck fast, the mad waves making a clear sweep over her, pouring down into the cabin through the skylight, which was destroyed.  One side of the cabin was immediately and permanently under water, the other frequently drenched.  The passengers, who were all up in a moment, chose the most sheltered positions, and there remained, calm, earnest, and resigned to any fate, for a long three hours.  No land was yet visible; they knew not where they were, but they knew that their chance of surviving was small indeed.  When the coast was first visible through the driving storm in the gray light of morning, the sand-hills were mistaken for rocks, which made the prospect still more dismal.  The young Ossoli cried a little with discomfort and fright, but was soon hushed to sleep.  Our friend Margaret had two life-preservers, but one of them proved unfit for use.  All the boats had been smashed in pieces or torn away soon after the vessel struck; and it would have been madness to launch them in the dark, if it had been possible to launch them at all, with the waves charging over the wreck every moment.  A sailor, soon after light, took Madame Ossoli’s serviceable life-preserver and swam ashore with it, in quest of aid for those left on board, and arrived safe, but of course could not return his means of deliverance.

By 7 A.M. it became evident that the cabin must soon go to pieces, and indeed it was scarcely tenantable then.  The crew were collected in the forecastle, which was stronger and less exposed, the vessel having settled by the stem, and the sailors had been repeatedly ordered to go aft and help the passengers forward, but the peril was so great that none obeyed.  At length the second mate, Davis, went himself, and accompanied the Italian girl, Celesta Pardena, safely to the forecastle, though with great difficulty.  Madame Ossoli went next, and had a narrow escape from being washed away, but got over.  Her child was placed in a bag tied around a sailor’s neck, and thus carried safely.  Marquis Ossoli and the rest followed, each convoyed by the mate or one of the sailors.

All being collected in the forecastle, it was evident that their position was still most perilous, and that the ship could not much longer hold together.  The women were urged to try first the experiment of taking each a plank and committing themselves to the waves.  Madame Ossoli refused thus to be separated from her husband and child.  She had from the first expressed a willingness to live or die with them, but not to live without them.  Mrs. Hasty was the first to try the plank, and, though the struggle was for some time a doubtful one, did finally reach the shore, utterly exhausted.  There was a strong current setting to the westward, so that, though the wreck lay but a quarter of a mile from the shore, she landed three fourths of a mile distant.  No other woman,