d ourselves
among the breakers of the terrible bar of Findhorn. And shortly after,
the poor _Friendship_ took the ground right on the edge of the
quicksands, for she would neither stay nor wear; and as she beat hard
against the bottom, the surf came rolling over half-mast high.

"Just as we struck," continued Jack, "the master made a desperate effort
to get into the cabin. The vessel couldn't miss, we saw, to break up and
fill; and though there was little hope of any of us ever setting foot
ashore, he wished to give the poor woman below a chance with the rest.
All of us but himself, mistress, had got up into the shrouds, and so we
could see round us a bit; and he had just laid his hand on the
companion-hasp to undo the door, when I saw a tremendous sea coming
rolling towards us, like a moving wall, and shouted on him to hold fast.
He sprang to the weather back-stay, and laid hold. The sea came tumbling
on, and, breaking full twenty feet over his head, buried him for a
minute's space in the foam. We thought we should never see him more; but
when it cleared away, there was he still, with his iron grip on the
stay, though the fearful wave had water-logged the _Friendship_ from bow
to stem, and swept her companion-head as cleanly off by the deck as if
it had been cut with a saw. No human aid could avail the poor woman and
her baby. Master could hear the terrible choking noise of her dying
agony right under his feet, with but a two-inch plank between; and the
sounds have haunted him ever since. But even had he succeeded in getting
her on deck, she could not possibly have survived, mistress. For five
long hours we clung to the rigging, with the seas riding over us all the
time like wild horses; and though we could see, through the snow-drift
and the spray, crowds on the shore, and boats lying thick beside the
pier, none dared venture out to assist us, till near the close of the
day, when the wind fell with the falling tide, and we were brought
ashore, more dead than alive, by a volunteer crew from the harbour. The
unlucky _Friendship_ began to break up under us ere mid-day, and we saw
the corpse of the drowned woman, with the dead infant still in its arms,
come floating out through a hole in the side. But the surf soon tore
mother and child asunder, and we lost sight of them as they drifted away
to the west. Master would have crossed the Firth himself this morning to
relieve your mind, but being less worn out than any of us, h