where they fell easy prey to hunters on snowshoes who brought in no less than two hundred, forty of them trapped alive. All up and down the Cape, in every village and town, as the years passed, the sea took its toll of men. In 1828 some thirty of them, mostly from Sandwich and Yarmouth, small merchants and artisans who had spent the winter “prosecuting their business” in South Carolina, were lost on their homeward voyage. That was a disastrous year for many a man who followed the sea, and in Truro, especially, the number of grave-stones grew. Of all these memorials the most tragic is that “Sacred to the memory of fifty-seven citizens of Truro who were lost in seven vessels, which foundered at sea in the memorable gale of October 3, 1841.” Fifty-seven men of Truro, ten of Yarmouth, twenty of Dennis “mostly youngsters under thirty,” never made port in that gale. They were fishing on George’s Bank when the storm broke, and “made sail to run for the highland of Cape Cod,” we may read. “But there were mighty currents unknown to them before which carried them out of the proper course to the southwest. Finding they could not weather by the highland they wore ship and stood to the southeast but being disabled in their sails and rigging—the strongest canvas was blown into shreds—they were carried by wind and current upon the Nantucket Shoals.” A few boats did succeed in rounding Provincetown; others never made even the Nantucket Shoals; one was found bottom up in Nauset Harbor, “with the boys drowned in her cabin.” A captain, whose seamanship and indomitable pluck saved him that day, lived to write the record. “I knew we had a good sea-boat; I had tried her in a hard scratch, and knew our race was life or death.” Somehow, where other masters failed, he won. By a hair’s breadth he escaped the shoals. “We hung on sharp as possible by the wind, our little craft proving herself not only able but seemingly endowed with life. In this way at 3.30 we weathered the Highlands with no room to spare. When off Peaked Hill Bar the jib blew away, and we just cleared the breakers; but we had weathered! the lee shore was astern, and Race Point under our lee, which we rounded and let go our anchor in the Herring Cove.” Rich chronicles the almost incredible feat of another boat that turned turtle and around again and survived. The Reform lay-to “under bare poles, with a drag-net to keep her head to the wind. As it was impossible to remain on deck on account of the sea making a breach fore and aft, all hands fastened themselves in the cabin and awaited their fate, at the mercy of the storm. A moment after a terrific sea fairly swallowed them many fathoms below the surface. The vessel was thrown completely bottom up. The crew had no doubt it was her final plunge. A few seconds only, she was again on her keel. Two or three men crawled on deck; they found the masts gone and the hawser of the drag wound around the bowsprit. She had