Within it was worse, for the waters sapping the foundations, gave continual and just apprehensions of the houses falling, as in effect half of them did, and buried their inhabitants! Nor indeed after the storm had began, was it safe to open a door, especially such as faced the wind, lest it should carry the roofs off; and escaping thence, there was no place of retreat, we remaining in a very melancholly scituation, both from wind and water. _The perils of false brethren was nothing to it._ It may be worth notice, what became of the purser in this common danger; I was regardless at first, as suspecting more of timidity in the people, till finding myself left alone proprietor of a shaking old house, the streets full of water and drift, with shingles flying about like arrows; I began to meditate a little more seriously upon my safety, and would have compounded all my _credit_ in the victualling, my hoops, and bags, for one acre (as _Gonzalo_ says in the _Tempest_) _of barren ground, long heath, or brown furze_, to have trod dry upon. Our neighbours had retreated towards the church, as the strongest building, and highest ground, which I was luckily too late to recover; but endeavouring to stem upwards for a safer station, was taken into a house in the lower street, with an old woman wading in the same manner from her ruined habitation. We were no sooner in, but new fears of this also falling, thrust us into the yard (the water then at eleven o’clock, breast high) where we helped one another upon a low brick-built outhouse, that being more out of the wind, and surrounded with others, kept the water still. The unhappiness of those who suffered in stronger, was their facing the wind, which brought the sea upon them with violence. A platform of one and twenty guns and mortars were drove some of them to the market-place; the two lines of houses next the sea, with the church, was undermined and levelled with the torrent, and in their ruin was our safety; for altho’ we had a greater depth, they were by such a bank made motionless. The whole rise of the water was computed at 16 or 18 foot, very admirable at a place where it is not ordinarily observed to flow above one or two. At 5 in the evening the waters abated, and with so quick a retreat as to leave the streets dry before 6; when every one was congratulating his own safety in condolancies upon the loss of their friends. Of 50 sail in this harbour, only four men-of-war and 2 merchant ships rid it out, but with all their masts and booms blown away. All the men we left at _Gun Kay_ were washed off and perished, except one _Indian_ that drove into harbour upon a broken gallows that had been there erected. Wrecks and drowned men were everywhere seen along shore; general complaints of loss at land (least at _St. Jago_) which made it a melancholy scene, and to finish the misfortune, the slackness of the sea-breezes, calms,