Sea-Side Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, the Scilly Isles, & Jersey

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1858 edition. ... A SHIPWRECK. 225 tion, one at a time obtained some relief, by stretching at full length on the barrels in the hold, squeezing himself close up to the keelson." What a situation! To rightly conceive its horrors, we must know that their only means of distinguishing day from night, was by the light which struck from above into the sea, and was reflected up through the cabin skylight, and thence through the trap-hatch into the lazarette. "The day and night of Tuesday the 17th, and of Wednesday the 18th, passed without relief, without food, almost without hope; but each encouraged the others when neither could hope for himself; endeavouring to assuage the pangs of hunger by chewing the bark stripped off from the hoops of the casks. Want of fresh air threatening them with death from suffocation, the mate worked almost incessantly for two days and one night, in endeavouring, with his knife, to cut a hole through the hull." There is something very terrible in contemplating such a position, in seeing the mad energy of the mate thus to cut a hole, which would have caused instant destruction to the sufferers, since it was solely owing to this confined air that the vessel floated. Bad as the tainted air was, and threatening life every hour, it was the sole safety of the crew. They knew nothing of this; and when the mate's knife broke, a savage wrath at their frustrated hope must have seized them. "In the dead of the night of Wednesday, the vessel suddenly struck on the third blow the stern dropped so much that all hands were forced to make the best of their way, one by one, further towards the bows; in attempting which poor Vincent was caught by the water and drowned, falling down through the cabin floor and skylight. After the lapse of an...