great extent; but the darkness and the noise of the
raging deep, and the howling wind, never intermitted till about midnight:
at which time a message was brought to me, that it might be needful to
send a guard of soldiers to the beach, for that broken masts and tackle
had come in, and that surely some of the barks had perished. I lost no
time in obeying this suggestion, which was made to me by one of the
owners of the Louping Meg; and to show that I sincerely sympathized with
all those in affliction, I rose and dressed myself, and went down to the
shore, where I directed several old boats to be drawn up by the fires,
and blankets to be brought, and cordials prepared, for them that might be
spared with life to reach the land; and I walked the beach with the
mourners till the morning.

As the day dawned, the wind began to abate in its violence, and to wear
away from the sou-west into the norit, but it was soon discovered that
some of the vessels with the corn had perished; for the first thing seen,
was a long fringe of tangle and grain along the line of the highwater
mark, and every one strained with greedy and grieved eyes, as the
daylight brightened, to discover which had suffered. But I can proceed
no further with the dismal recital of that doleful morning. Let it
suffice here to be known, that, through the haze, we at last saw three of
the vessels lying on their beam-ends with their masts broken, and the
waves riding like the furious horses of destruction over them. What had
become of the other two was never known; but it was supposed that they
had foundered at their anchors, and that all on board perished.

The day being now Sabbath, and the whole town idle, every body in a
manner was down on the beach, to help and mourn as the bodies, one after
another, were cast out by the waves. Alas! few were the better of my
provident preparation, and it was a thing not to be described, to see,
for more than a mile along the coast, the new-made widows and fatherless
bairns, mourning and weeping over the corpses of those they loved.
Seventeen bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the desolated
dwelling of their families; and when old Thomas Pull, the betheral, went
to ring the bell for public worship, such was the universal sorrow of the
town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, ran up the street to stop him,
crying, in the voice of a pardonable desperation, "Wha, in sic a time,
can praise the Lord?"

CHAPTER