The little gunboat _Eber_ was making a desperate struggle, but her doom was certain. Suddenly she shot forward, the current bore her off to the right, and her bow struck the port quarter of the _Nipsic_, carrying away several feet of the _Nipsic’s_ rail and one boat. The _Eber_ then fell back and fouled with the _Olga_, and after that she swung around broadside to the wind, was lifted high on the crest of a great wave and hurled with awful force upon the reef. In an instant there was not a vestige of her to be seen. Every timber must have been shattered, and half the poor creatures aboard of her crushed to death before they felt the waters closing above their heads. Hundreds of people were on the beach by this time, and the work of destruction had occurred within full view of them all. They stood for a moment appalled by the awful scene, and a cry of horror arose from the lips of every man who had seen nearly a hundred of his fellow-creatures perish in an instant. Then with one accord they all rushed to the water’s edge nearest the point where the _Eber_ had foundered. The natives ran into the surf far beyond the point where a white man could have lived, and stood waiting to save any who might rise from the water. There were six officers and seventy men on the _Eber_ when she struck the reef, and of these five officers and sixty-six men were lost. This was about six o’clock in the morning. [Illustration: “THE SAMOANS STOOD BATTLING AGAINST THE SURF, RISKING THEIR LIVES TO SAVE THE AMERICAN SAILORS.”] During the excitement attending that calamity the other vessels had been for the time forgotten, but it was soon noticed that the positions of several of them had become more alarming. The _Adler_ had been swept across the bay, close to the reef, and in half an hour she was lifted on top of the reef and turned completely over on her side. Nearly every man was thrown into the water, but as almost the entire hull was exposed, all but twenty succeeded in regaining her deck, and the remainder were rescued toward the close of the day when almost exhausted.