ed, in short, during the whole of our passage to
England, to take no other delight than in ministering to all our wants.

Although, after the first burst of mutual gratulation, and of becoming
acknowledgment of the divine mercy for our unlooked-for deliverance, had
subsided, none of us felt disposed to much interchange of thought, each
being rather inclined to wrap himself up in his own reflections; yet we
did not, during the first night, view with the alarm it warranted, the
extreme misery and danger to which we were still exposed, by being
crowded together, in a gale of wind, with upwards of 600 human beings,
in a small brig of 200 tons, at a distance, too, of several hundred
miles from any accessible port. Our little cabin, which was only
calculated, under ordinary circumstances, for the accommodation of eight
or ten persons, was now made to contain nearly eighty individuals, many
of whom had no sitting room, and even some of the ladies no room to lie
down. Owing to the continued violence of the gale, and to the bulwarks
on one side of the brig having been driven in, the sea beat so
incessantly over our deck as to render it necessary that the hatches
should only be lifted up between the returning waves, to prevent
absolute suffocation below, where the men were so closely packed
together that the steam arising from their respiration excited at one
time an apprehension that the vessel was on fire; while the impurity of
the air they were inhaling became so marked, that the lights
occasionally carried down amongst them were almost instantly
extinguished. Nor was the condition of the hundreds who covered the deck
less wretched than that of their comrades below; since they were
obliged night and day to stand shivering, in their wet and nearly naked
state, ankle deep in water:[13]--some of the older children and females
were thrown into fits, while the infants were piteously crying for that
nourishment which their nursing mothers were no longer able to give
them.[14]

Our only hope amid these great and accumulating miseries was that the
same compassionate Providence which had already so marvellously
interposed in our behalf would not permit the favourable wind to abate
or change until we reached some friendly port; for we were all convinced
that a delay of a very few days longer at sea must inevitably involve us
in famine, pestilence, and a complication of the most dreadful evils.
Our hopes were not disappointed. The gale