and many other hidden dangers during
the darkness.

Matters, on the morning of the 5th, assumed a very different aspect from
that which we had experienced for the last two days; the wind gradually
subsided, and, with it the sea, and a favorable breeze now springing up,
we were enabled to make a good offing. Fortunately, no accident of
consequence occurred, although several of our people were severely
bruised by falls. Poor fellows! they certainly suffered enough; not a
dry stitch, not a dry hammock have they had since we sailed. Happily,
however, their misfortunes are soon forgot in a dry shirt and a can
of grog.

The most melancholy part of the narrative is still to be told. On coming
up to our anchorage, we observed an unusual degree of curiosity and
bustle in the fort; crowds of people were congregated on both sides,
running to and fro, examining us through spyglasses; in short, an
extraordinary commotion was apparent. The meaning of all this was but
too soon made known to us by a boat coming alongside, from which we
learned that the unfortunate Saldanha had gone to pieces, and every man
perished! Our own destruction had likewise been reckoned inevitable,
from the time of the discovery of the unhappy fate of our consort, five
days beforehand; and hence the astonishment at our unexpected return.
From all that could be learned concerning the dreadful catastrophe, I am
inclined to believe that the Saldanha had been driven on the rocks about
the time our doom appeared so certain in another quarter. Her lights
were seen by the signal-tower at nine o'clock of that fearful Wednesday
night, December 4th, after which it is supposed she went ashore on the
rocks at a small bay called Ballymastaker, almost at the entrance of
Lochswilly harbor.

Next morning the beach was strewed with fragments of the wreck, and
upward of two hundred of the bodies of the unfortunate sufferers were
washed ashore. One man--and one only--out of the three hundred, was
ascertained to have come ashore alive, but almost in a state of
insensibility. Unhappily, there was no person present to administer to
his wants judiciously, and, upon craving something to drink, about half
a pint of whiskey was given him by the people, which almost instantly
killed him. Poor Packenham's body was recognized amid the others, and
like these, stripped quite naked by the inhuman wretches, who flocked to
the wreck as to a blessing! It is even suspected that he came on sho