I remember the very height of the storm, when the noise of the thunder could scarcely be distinguished from the roar of the waters, and the torrents of rain,--when the elements in fact howled wildly and angrily at one another,--when the lightning pouring, as one may call it, on our decks, blazed in at the fore windows of the cuddy, being horror-stricken at the ghastly faces assembled under the uncertain and flickering light of a broken lamp. I can remember when the water rose up to my knees, being carried between decks with my child, through rows of shrieking women and silent soldiers. The conduct of our men was beyond all praise. For some time, I sat on a chest with my child, near the fore-hatch, the ship continuing to drive, every moment striking against the sand, and our only hopes resting on the coming of the dawn, which would show us where we were, the floods of rain preventing the lightning--vivid as it was--from doing this distinctly. About six in the morning, the master came down among us with some comfort, saying he hoped the ship was making a bed for herself in the sand. In truth, she had been all night like some great creature scratching her way through it with restless impatience. The rudder had been carried away from the first, the stern cabins knocked into one, and the sea bubbling up like a fountain in the after part of the ship. We were yet uncertain of our safety, for there were rocks not many hundred yards from us on which the "Waterloo" convict ship had already struck; but of her anon. Meanwhile, our people attaching a rope to a shot, fired it on shore, but in vain. All night the guns from the fort and other vessels had been giving awful warnings to the town, while the constant roll of musketry onboard the convict ship, led us to imagine that the convicts were mutinous. This was, however, discovered afterwards not to be the case; they had been loosened from their bonds on the first alarm, and desired to make use of the first possible means of escape.