Their situation was awful. To windward huge black waves rose like tremendous ruins, and came rolling, fringed with devouring fire; and each wave as it charged them, curled up to an incredible height and dashed down on the doomed ship--solid to crush, liquid to drown--with a ponderous stroke that made the poor souls stagger, and sent a sheet of water so clean over her that part fell to leeward, and only part came down on deck, foretaste of a watery death; and each of these fearful blows drove the groaning, trembling vessel farther on the sand, bumping her along as if she had been but a skiff. Now it was men showed their inner selves. Seeing Death so near on one hand, and a chance of escape on the other, seven men proved unable to resist the two great passions of Fear and Hope on a scale so gigantic and side by side. Bayliss, a midshipman, and five sailors stole the only available boat and lowered her. She was swamped in a moment Many of the crew got to the rum, and stupefied themselves to their destruction. Others rallied round their old captain, and recovered their native courage at the brave and hopeful bearing he wore over a heart full of anguish. He worked like a horse, encouraging, commanding, doing; he loaded a carronade with a pound of powder and a coil of rope, with an iron bar attached to a cable, and shot the rope and bar ashore. A gun was now fired from the guard-house, whose light Robarts had taken for a ship. But no light being shown any nearer on the coast, and the ship expected every minute to go to pieces, Dodd asked if any one would try to swim ashore with a line made fast to a hawser on board. A sailor offered to go if any other man would risk his life along with him. Instantly Fullalove stripped, and Vespasian next. “Two is enough on such a desperate errand,” said Dodd with a groan. But now emulation was up, and neither Briton, Yankee, nor negro would give way. A line was made fast to the sailor's waist, and he was lowered to leeward; his venturesome rivals followed. The sea swallowed those three heroes like crumbs, and small was the hope of life for them. The three heroes being first-rate swimmers and divers, and going with the tide, soon neared the shore on the ship's lee quarter; but a sight of it was enough: to attempt to land on that rock with such a sea on was to get their skulls smashed like eggshells in a moment. They had to coast it, looking out for a soft place. They found one, and tried to land; but so irresistible was the suction of the retiring wave, that, whenever they got foot on the sand, and tried to run, they were wrenched out to sea again, and pounded black and blue and breathless by the curling breaker they met coming in.