hour later the poop was washed away, and carried towards
the shore. Seventy or eighty men who were upon it seemed likely to be
saved from the surrounding destruction. The people on the beach
crowded to the spot where they would probably be driven, that they
might render every possible assistance; but what was their horror to
see a tremendous wave strike the poop, capsize it, and turn it over
and over; whilst every one of those who clung to it perished!

But the terrors of that awful night were not yet exhausted. The wreck,
to which the remaining officers and men were clinging, heeled towards
the shore; but when the gale increased and blew with redoubled force,
it heeled off again, rent fore and aft, and parted in two
places--before the main-chains, and abaft the fore-chains--and then
all disappeared from the eyes of the awe-stricken spectators on the
beach.

High above the crash of timbers and the roaring of the blast, rose the
despairing cry of hundreds of human beings who perished in the waters,
and whose mutilated forms, with the fragments of the wreck, strewed
the beach for miles on the following morning.

Thirty or forty seamen and marines still clung to the bow, the sea
breaking over them incessantly; they kept their hold, however, in the
fond hope that the signal gun remaining, might by its weight prevent
the bow from being capsized; but the timbers, unable to resist the
fury of the tempest, suddenly parted,--the gun reeled from side to
side, and the unhappy men shared the fate of their companions. It has
been said that during that awful time, whilst threatened with instant
death, many of these men were in a stupor, with their hands locked in
the chain plates.

Among the incidents connected with the wreck, it is related that Mr.
Buddle, a midshipman, (one of the few who escaped,) was cast upon the
waves almost insensible. He had not strength to strike out for the
beach, and he therefore merely tried to keep himself above water. This
proved to be the means of saving his life, for he floated in a
direction parallel with the shore, and avoided the huge pieces of
wreck by which all his companions who made directly for land
(excepting three) were dashed to pieces.

Mr. Buddle was nearly exhausted, when he caught hold of a small piece
of timber that was floating near him; a nail which projected from it
wounded him on the breast; he fainted, and did not recover his senses
until he found himself lying on the beach