their own art, and though his own desires were sufficiently earnest to
hasten to his dear relations and country; yet the present haste he feared
might hinder the seeing of them at all. Upon a strange earnestness in his
own mind and judgement, he gave a positive command to the captain to
cause all the sails to be taken down except the mainsail only, and that
to be half-furled. Upon the captain's dispute, Whitelocke with quickness
told him that if he did not presently see it done he would cause another
to do it, whereupon the captain obeyed; and it was a great mercy that the
same was done, which God directed as a means to save their lives.

[SN: The ship strikes.]

After the sails were taken down, Whitelocke also ordered them to sound
and try what water and bottom they had. About ten o'clock in the evening
sounding, they found eighteen fathom water; the next sounding they had
but fifteen fathom, and so lessened every sounding till they came to
eight fathom, which startled them, and made them endeavour to tack about.
But it was too late, for within less than a quarter of an hour after they
had eighteen fathom water, the ship struck upon a bank of sand, and there
stuck fast. Whitelocke was sitting with some of the gentlemen in the
steerage-room when this happened, and felt a strange motion of the
frigate, as if she had leaped, and not unlike the curveting of a great
horse; and the violence of the striking threw several of the gentlemen
from off their seats into the midst of the room. The condition they were
in was quickly understood, and both seamen and landsmen discovered it by
the wonderful terror and amazement which had seized on them, and more
upon the seamen than others who knew less of the danger.

It pleased his good God to keep up the spirits and faith of Whitelocke in
this great extremity; and when nothing would be done but what he in
person ordered, in this frightful confusion God gave him extraordinary
fixedness and assistance, a temper and constancy of spirit beyond what
was usual with him. He ordered the master-gunner presently to fire some
pieces of ordnance, after the custom at sea, to signify their being in
distress. But the gunner was so amazed with the danger, that he forgot to
unbrace the guns, and shot away the main-sheet; and had not the ship been
strong and staunch, the guns being fired when they were close braced,
they had broke the sides of her. Whitelocke caused the guns to be
unbraced and divers