that resembled a groan, then stopping to
steady myself during some particular wild leap of the hull; until,
coming abreast of the main hatch, the rays of the lantern struck upon a
man's body, which, on my bringing the flame to his face, proved to be
Captain Rosy. There was a wound over his right brow; and as if that had
not sufficed to slay him, the fall of the masts had in some wonderful
manner whipped a rope several times round his body, binding his arms and
encircling his throat so tightly, that no executioner could have gone
more artistically to work to pinion and choke a man.

Under a mass of rigging in the larboard scuppers lay two bodies, as I
could just faintly discern; it was impossible to put the lantern close
enough to either one of them to distinguish his face, nor had I the
strength even if I had possessed the weapons to extricate them, for they
lay under a whole body of shrouds, complicated by a mass of other gear,
against which leaned a portion of the caboose. I viewed them long enough
to satisfy my mind that they were dead, and then with a heart of lead
turned away.

I crossed to the starboard side, where the deck was comparatively clear,
and found the body of a seaman named Abraham Wise near the fore-hatch.
This man had probably been stunned and drowned by the sea that filled
the deck after I loosed the staysail. These were all of our people that
I could find; the others I supposed had been washed by the water or
knocked by the falling spars overboard.

I returned to the quarter-deck, and sat down in the companion way for
the shelter of it and to think. No language that I have command of could
put before you the horror that possessed me as I sat meditating upon my
situation and recalling the faces of the dead. The wind was rapidly
falling, and with it the sea, but the motion of the brig continued very
heavy, a large swell having been set running by the long, fierce gale
that was gone; and there being no uproar of tempest in the sky to
confound the senses, I could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy
groaning and straining sounds rising from the hull, with now and again a
mighty blow as from some spar or lump of ice alongside, weighty enough,
you would have supposed, to stave the ship. But though the _Laughing
Mary_ was not a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her kind ever
launched, built mainly of oak and put together by an honest artificer.
Nevertheless her continuing to float in her miserabl