however, the rush became greatly louder; some other
weak patch in the Betsey's upper works had given way, and anon the water
came washing up from the lee side along the edge of the cabin floor. I
got upon deck to see how matters stood with us; and the minister, easing
off the vessel for a few points, gave instant orders to shorten sail, in
the hope of getting her upper works out of the water, and then to unship
the companion ladder, beneath which a hatch communicated with the low
strip of hold under the cabin, and to bring aft the pails. We lowered
our foresail; furled up the mainsail half-mast high; John Stewart took
his station at the pump; old Alister and I, furnished with pails, took
ours, the one at the foot, the other at the head, of the companion, to
hand up and throw over; a young girl, a passenger from Eigg to the
mainland, lent her assistance, and got wofully drenched in the work;
while the minister, retaining his station at the helm, steered right on.
But the gale had so increased, that, notwithstanding our diminished
breadth of sail, the Betsey, straining hard in the rough sea, still lay
in to the gunwale; and the water, pouring in through a hundred opening
chinks in her upper works, rose, despite of our exertions, high over
plank, and beam, and cabin-floor, and went dashing against beds and
lockers. She was evidently filling, and bade fair to terminate all her
voyagings by a short trip to the bottom. Old Alister, a seaman of thirty
years' standing, whose station at the bottom of the cabin stairs enabled
him to see how fast the water was gaining on the Betsey, but not how the
Betsey was gaining on the land, was by no means the least anxious among
us. Twenty years previous he had seen a vessel go down in exactly
similar circumstances, and in nearly the same place, and the
reminiscence, in the circumstances, seemed rather an uncomfortable one.
It had been a bad evening, he said, and the vessel he sailed in, and a
sloop, her companion, were pressing hard to gain the land. The sloop had
sprung a leak, and was straining, as if for life and death, under a
press of canvas. He saw her outsail the vessel to which he belonged,
but, when a few shots a-head she gave a sudden lurch, and disappeared
from the surface instantaneously as a vanishing spectre, and neither
sloop nor crew were ever more heard of.

There are, I am convinced, few deaths less painful than some of those
untimely and violent ones at which we are most