The appearance of the elements at this time almost baffles description.  So violent was their commotion that no one could stand without grasping something for support.  Not a word could be heard that was uttered.  I had to communicate every order by means of signs, while I stood on the quarter-deck holding on to the cabin doors.  In this situation I endeavored calmly to reflect.  Here we were, as we supposed, on the open ocean,—­in a tempest of unparalleled violence—­with no rudder—­one mast gone—­boats all lost—­and the ship settling under us from the weight of water in the hold.  The sky was black almost as midnight above us, and the waves beneath, and around, and over us—­for they dashed at quick intervals, like so many furies, across the devoted ship—­seemed ready to drown us ere we sank into their dread abyss.  The voice of the gale as it howled through the rigging, mingled with the creaking of timbers, and the roar of waters as they struck the vessel, was an awful wail, as it appeared to me, over bodies devoted to almost instant death.  Destruction seemed inevitable.  It would not, to all human calculation, be protracted even an hour.  We were sinking down, down—­inch following inch of the fated vessel in rapid succession—­down remedilessly to our graves in the maddened sea, amid the monsters of its great deep.

I descended to the cabin, and attempted calmly to surrender myself to Him who made me.  My thoughts—­oh, how they flew at once to my wife and children at home!  I attempted to pray, and for the first time since I had left my pious mother.  I did pray—­for my family first—­and oh how fervently, in closing my supplications, I besought for myself pardon and forgiveness through Him who is ever ready to hear the penitent!

The water had now got on to the cabin floor, I therefore placed myself on the stairs leading on deck.  Shortly after this the wind shifted, and in a few minutes the ship struck with a tremendous crash.  I rushed on deck, and at once saw rocks fifty feet high, and perpendicular, but a few feet from the after part of the ship, which now soon filled with water, and rolled over toward the land.  At its fore part, and at the only point where we could by any possibility have been saved, the rocks descended gradually, and the foremast leaned over them.  Not a moment was to be lost.  We crawled up the rigging, and, swinging ourselves on to the rocks, made our way up the precipice on our hands and feet, and, reaching the summit, at once sought, in holes in the rock, shelter from the tempest, which still continued so violent that no one could stand upon his feet.

Our escape happened about ten o’clock in the morning; at five in the afternoon the gale had so moderated that we could stand.  We then crawled out from our hiding places, and, assembling together, found that all were safe except my brother, who was mate of the ship, and he, we supposed, was lost, in attempting to get on shore.  We soon, as was very natural, approached the precipice to learn the fate of the ship.  Nothing was to be seen of her but plank, timbers, spars, sails, and rigging, all in one confused, broken mass, and washing up against the rocks.  It was truly to us a most deplorable spectacle.  We had no resource in the vessel; not a thing of value was left.