oat. The women were
then urged to avail themselves of every favourable heave of the sea by
springing towards the many friendly arms that were extended from the
vessel to receive them; and, notwithstanding the deplorable
consequence of making a false step under such critical circumstances,
not a single accident occurred to any individual belonging to the first
boat. Indeed, the only one whose life appears to have been placed in
extreme jeopardy alongside was one of the ladies, who, in attempting to
spring from the boat, came short of the hand that was held out to her,
and would certainly have perished, had she not most happily caught hold
at the instant of a rope that happened to be hanging over the
_Cambria's_ side, to which she clung for some moments, until she was
dragged into the vessel.

I have reason to know that the feelings of oppressive delight,
gratitude, and praise experienced by the married officers and soldiers
on being assured of the comparative safety of their wives and children,
so entirely abstracted their minds from their own situation as to render
them for a little while totally insensible either to the storm that beat
upon them, or to the active and gathering volcano that threatened every
instant to explode under their feet.

It being impossible for the boats, after the first trip, to come
alongside the _Kent_, a plan was adopted for lowering the women and
children by ropes from the stern, by tying them two and two together.
But from the heaving of the ship, and the extreme difficulty in dropping
them at the instant the boat was underneath, many of the poor creatures
were unavoidably plunged repeatedly under water; and much as humanity
may rejoice that no woman was eventually lost by this process, yet it
was as impossible to prevent, as it was deplorable to witness, the great
sacrifice thus occasioned of the younger children--the same violent
means which only reduced the parents to a state of exhaustion or
insensibility, having entirely extinguished the vital spark in the
feebler frames of the infants that were fastened to them.

Amid the conflicting feelings and dispositions manifested by the
numerous actors in this melancholy drama, many affecting proofs were
elicited of parental and filial affection, or of disinterested
friendship, that seemed to shed a momentary halo around the gloomy
scene.

Two or three soldiers, to relieve their wives of a part of their
families, sprang into the water with