what remained
of darkness, the captains impatiently expected day, doubtful if they were
dragging, steaming gingerly to their moorings, and afraid to steam too
much.

Day came about six, and presented to those on shore a seizing and
terrific spectacle. In the pressure of the squalls the bay was obscured
as if by midnight, but between them a great part of it was clearly if
darkly visible amid driving mist and rain. The wind blew into the
harbour mouth. Naval authorities describe it as of hurricane force. It
had, however, few or none of the effects on shore suggested by that
ominous word, and was successfully withstood by trees and buildings. The
agitation of the sea, on the other hand, surpassed experience and
description. Seas that might have awakened surprise and terror in the
midst of the Atlantic ranged bodily and (it seemed to observers) almost
without diminution into the belly of that flask-shaped harbour; and the
war-ships were alternately buried from view in the trough, or seen
standing on end against the breast of billows.

The _Trenton_ at daylight still maintained her position in the neck of
the bottle. But five of the remaining ships tossed, already close to the
bottom, in a perilous and helpless crowd; threatening ruin to each other
as they tossed; threatened with a common and imminent destruction on the
reefs. Three had been already in collision: the _Olga_ was injured in
the quarter, the _Adler_ had lost her bowsprit; the _Nipsic_ had lost her
smoke-stack, and was making steam with difficulty, maintaining her fire
with barrels of pork, and the smoke and sparks pouring along the level of
the deck. For the seventh war-ship the day had come too late; the _Eber_
had finished her last cruise; she was to be seen no more save by the eyes
of divers. A coral reef is not only an instrument of destruction, but a
place of sepulchre; the submarine cliff is profoundly undercut, and
presents the mouth of a huge antre in which the bodies of men and the
hulls of ships are alike hurled down and buried. The _Eber_ had dragged
anchors with the rest; her injured screw disabled her from steaming
vigorously up; and a little before day she had struck the front of the
coral, come off, struck again, and gone down stern foremost, oversetting
as she went, into the gaping hollow of the reef. Of her whole complement
of nearly eighty, four souls were cast alive on the beach; and the bodies
of the remainder were, by the volu