continued with even increasing
violence; and our able captain, crowding all sail, at the risk of
carrying away his masts, so nobly urged his vessel onward, that in the
afternoon of Thursday, the 3rd, the delightful exclamation from aloft
was heard, "Land ahead!" In the evening we descried the Scilly lights;
and running rapidly along the Cornish coast, we joyfully cast anchor in
Falmouth harbour, at about half-past twelve o'clock at night.

On reviewing the various proximate causes to which so many human beings
owed their deliverance from a combination of dangers as remarkable for
their duration as they were appalling in their aspect, it is impossible,
I think, not to discover and gratefully acknowledge, in the beneficence
of their arrangement, the overruling providence of that blessed Being,
who is sometimes pleased, in His mysterious operations, to produce the
same effect from causes apparently different; and on the other hand, as
in our own case, to bring forth results the most opposite, from one and
the same cause. For there is no doubt that the heavy rolling of our
ship, occasioned by the violent gale, which was the real origin of all
our disasters, contributed also most essentially to our subsequent
preservation; since, had not Captain Cobb been enabled, by the
greatness of the swell, to introduce speedily through the gun ports the
immense quantity of water that inundated the hold, and thereby checked
for so long a time the fury of the flames, the _Kent_ must
unquestionably have been consumed before many, perhaps before any, of
those on board could have found shelter in the _Cambria_.[15]

But it is unnecessary to dwell on an insulated fact like this, amidst a
concatenation of circumstances, all leading to the same conclusion, and
so closely bound together as to force us to confess, that if a single
link in the chain had been withdrawn or withheld, we must all most
probably have perished.

The _Cambria_, which had been, it seems, unaccountably detained in port
nearly a month after the period assigned for her departure, was early on
the morning of the fatal calamity pursuing at a great distance ahead of
us the same course with ourselves; but her bulwarks on the weather side
having been suddenly driven in, by a heavy sea breaking over her
quarter, Captain Cook, in his anxiety to give ease to his labouring
vessel, was induced to go completely out of his course by throwing the
brig on the opposite tack, by which mean