away, and great lumps of timber and planking ripping out of her and
going overboard with every pour of the seas. We let go our anchor
fifteen fathoms to windward of her, and as we did so we saw the poor
fellows unlashing themselves and dropping one by one over the top into
the lee rigging. As we veered out cable and drove down under her
stern, I shouted to the men on the wreck to bend a piece of wood on to
a line and throw it overboard for us to lay hold of. They did this,
but they had to get aft first, and I feared for the poor half-perished
creatures again and again as I saw them scrambling along the lee rail,
stopping and holding on as the mountainous seas swept over the hull,
and then creeping a bit further aft in the pause. There was a horrible
muddle of spars and torn canvas and rigging under her lee, but we could
not guess what a fearful sight was there until our hawser having been
made fast to the wreck, we had hauled the lifeboat close under her
quarter. There looked to be a whole score of dead bodies knocking
about among the spars. It stunned me for a moment, for I had thought
all hands were in the foretop, and never dreamt of so many lives having
been lost. Seventeen were drowned, and there they were, most of them,
and the body of the captain lashed to the head of the mizzenmast, so as
to look as if he were leaning over it, his head stiff upright and his
eyes watching us, and the stir of the seas made him appear to be
struggling to get to us. I thought he was alive, and cried to the men
to hand him in, but someone said he was killed when the mizzenmast
fell, and had been dead four or five hours. This was a dreadful shock;
I never remember the like of it. I can't hardly get those fixed eyes
out of my sight, sir, and I lie awake for hours of a night, and so does
Tom Cooper, and others of us, seeing those bodies torn by the spars and
bleeding, floating in the water alongside the miserable ship.

'Well, sir, the rest of this lamentable story has been told by the mate
of the vessel, and I don't know that I could add anything to it. We
saved the eleven men, and I have since heard that all of them are doing
well. If I may speak, as coxswain of the lifeboat, I would like to say
that all hands concerned in this rescue, them in the tug as well as the
crew of the boat, did what might be expected of English sailors--for
such they are, whether you call some of them boatmen or not; and I know
in my heart, and