But the climax was yet to come. About 8 P.M. the wind suddenly shifted to an opposite quarter, and blew, if possible, with greater fury. My feelings, however, exhausted by excitement, now sank into that state of apathetic quiescence which disarms death of all its terrors; when, in fact, we can feel no more, but patiently await the worst. Nature thus wisely, at a certain point, always brings insensibility to our relief—the last sigh of departing hope gives birth to resignation. About one o’clock the next day a tremendous sea broke on board, burst open and destroyed the remainder of the poop-cabins and cuddy, and swept chairs, tables, medicine-chests, and every movable they contained, overboard, filling the lower deck with water; but providentially no more lives were lost. The hurricane still raging, clouds and sea commingled; the foremast snapped short off by the deck, and falling athwart the bows, carried with it the jib-boom, leaving the battered hulk, with one mutilated mast, to contend alone with the fury of the elements. A wave, moreover, at this instant, dashed one of our boats to splinters, and nearly made a wreck of another. Thus were the grounds of hope giving way, like a quicksand, under our feet. To add to the intensity of our distress, a pitchy darkness enveloped us when the foremast fell overboard, and the sea breaking, in one continued mighty volume, over the vessel, none could go forward to cut it away; perilous to our safety as was its continuing attached to the bows. Oh! for the genius of a Falconer, that I might adequately depict the horrors of the scene at this moment! Ye “fat and greasy citizens,” ye grumbling John Bulls of every grade, who own the great oracle of retrenchment as your leader, little need ye grudge the soldier or sailor his hard-earned pittance, the price of perils such as these. An inky night, whose gloom was, ever and anon, pierced by a long, blue, zigzag flash of lightning, like one of those wrath-directed bolts of heaven, which Martin, with such fine effect, introduces into his pictures—the roar of elements—the crippled and lumbered vessel, rolling and plunging like a maddened steed, encumbered with the wreck of a shattered vehicle, the few dim lanterns, buttoned up, and hugged to the bosoms of the quarter-masters, the dripping, comfortless, but uncomplaining tars; the captain and his officers, muffled in fear-noughts, and the group, of which I formed one, clinging on here and there, in order to see the worst of what we had to encounter, formed a portion of the picture. Then the stifled sobs, and shrieks and prayers from the women below, filling, like the voices of wailing spirits, the momentary lullings of the gale; the violent beatings of the fallen mast, like a catapult, against the bows, felt through the whole vessel, and filling, even the stout hearts of the captain and his crew with well-founded dismay at each successive thump, formed some of its alarming accompaniments.