Quitting, for a moment, the subject of the wreck, I would advert to what was in the meantime taking place on board the _Cambria_. I cannot, however, pretend to give you any adequate idea of the feelings of hope or despair that alternately flowed, like a tide, in the breasts of the unhappy females on board the brig, during the many hours of torturing suspense in which several of them were unavoidably held respecting the fate of their husbands,--feelings which were inconceivably excited, rather than soothed, by the idle and erroneous rumours occasionally conveyed to them regarding the state of the _Kent_. But still less can I attempt to portray the alternate pictures of awful joy and of wild distraction exhibited by the sufferers (for both parties for the moment seemed equally to suffer), as the terrible truth was communicated that they and their children were indeed left husbandless and fatherless; or as the objects from whom they had feared they were for ever severed, suddenly rushed into their arms. But these feelings of delight, whatever may have been their intensity, were speedily chastened, and the attention of all arrested, by the last tremendous spectacle of destruction. After the arrival of the last boat the flames, which had spread along the upper deck and poop, ascended with the rapidity of lightning to the masts and rigging, forming one general conflagration, that illumined the heavens to an immense distance, and was strongly reflected by several objects on board the brig. The flags of distress, hoisted in the morning, were seen for a considerable time waving amid the flames, until the masts to which they were suspended successively fell like stately steeples over the ship's side. At last, about half-past one o'clock in the morning, the devouring element having communicated to the magazine, the explosion was seen, and the blazing fragments of the once magnificent _Kent_ were instantly hurried, like so many rockets, high into the air;[11] leaving, in the comparative darkness that succeeded, the deathful scene of that disastrous day floating before the mind like some feverish dream.