ring whether a surgeon could be procured for a poor creature with
a broken limb, who lay under the boat. Probably the man showed little
alacrity, for Mr. Smith found it necessary to purchase his good
offices by a gift of half a-guinea, which he imagined would induce him
to seek what was so much required. But the man, pocketing the
half-guinea with the greatest composure, said he was a king's officer,
and must see what bales of goods were driven on shore; then telling
Mr. Smith there was a ferry about four miles off, by which he might
get to Weymouth. The youth was thus disappointed of his humane design,
and the soldier died in that deplorable condition before any other aid
attained him.

In the Thomas, the vessel to which Mr. Smith belonged, he witnessed
scenes not less distressing. Mr. Brown, the master of the vessel, was
carried away by an immense wave just as he was stripping off his
clothes to endeavor to save himself. His son exclaiming, "Oh my
father, my father! my poor father!" instantly followed. The bodies of
both were afterwards found and interred at Wyke.

Of ninety-six persons on board the Venus, only Mr. John Darley of the
hospital staff, serjeant-major Hearne, twelve soldiers, four seamen
and a boy were saved. Mr. Darley escaped by throwing himself from the
wreck at a moment when it drifted high on the stones; he reached them
without broken limbs, but, overtaken by the furious sea, he was
carried back, not so far, however, that he was incapable of regaining
the ground. Notwithstanding the weight of his clothes and his
exhausted state, he got to the top of the bank, but there the power of
farther exertion failed, and he fell. While lying in this situation,
trying to recover breath and strength, a great many people from the
neighboring villages passed him; they had crossed the Fleet water in
the hopes of sharing the plunder of the vessels which the lower
inhabitants of the coast are too much accustomed to consider their
right.

Mr. Darley seems to have been so far from meeting with assistance
from those who were plundering the dead, without thinking of the
living, that although he saw many boats passing and repassing the
Fleet water, he found great difficulty in procuring a passage for
himself and two or three fellow-sufferers who had now joined him. But
having passed it he soon met with Mr. Bryer, to whose active humanity
all the sufferers were eminently indebted.

Before the full extent of this dreadf