in their berths, and praying for a calm. The
dead-lights were in, and the three hundred and
forty-four soldiers, miserable and pale enough,
were on deck, attached to the life-lines that were
run along the deck for the purpose. The sailors,
worn and apprehensive, were hard at work,
under the eye of their indefatigable captain.
About twelve o'clock the rolling of the ship
became worse than ever, being increased by the
dead weight of several hundred tons of shot
and shell that formed part of the lading. At
every lurch the main-chains were thrown deep
under water, and the best cleated furniture in
the cabin and cuddy (a large dining-room on a
level with the quarter-deck) was dashed about
with tremendous and dangerous violence.

Just before the morn, one of the ship's
officers, wishing to ascertain if all was fast
below, descended into the dark hold with two
sailors, who carried with them a patent lantern.
The candle in the lamp burning dim, the officer
very prudently sent it up to the orlop-deck to be
trimmed. Having then discovered a rum-cask to
be adrift, he called to the sailors for some billets
of wood with which to wedge it up. While
they were gone, a heavy lurch knocked the
lantern out of the officer's hand, and on his
letting go the cask to snatch at the lantern, the
cask stove, the rum flooded out, the light caught
it and broke into a wide blaze —- the ship was
on fire!

For a long time the flames not spreading
beyond a place surrounded by the water-casks,
it was hoped they could be drenched out;
but the light-blue haze soon turned to volumes
of thick, brown, curling smoke, that, pouring
through the four hatchways, spread through the
cabins, and rolled along from the forecastle to the
quarter-deck. There was no longer any hope
of suppressing the disaster, or concealing it
from the passengers. Soon a strong pitchy
smell pervaded the vessel; the fire had burned
through to the partitions and sides of the hold.
The sailors cried out, all together:

"It has reached the cable tier!"

Major M'Gregor, who had been reading the
Bible to a friend, being told that the ship was
on fire in the after hold, knocked gently at the
cabin-door and quietly informed Colonel Fearon,
the commanding officer of the troops. On deck,
amid the smoke slowly rising, Captain Cobb and
the other officers were already giving orders
to the seamen and troops, who were working at
the pumps, and passing buckets, and throwing
wet sails and hammocks on the now irrepressible
fire.

Many of the ladies below, seeing Major
M'Gregor's anxious face and absorbed manner,
and hearing the increased noise and confusion
on deck, could not be pacified by the assurance
that the gale was no worse. At this awful crisis,
Cobb, firm, staunch, sagacious, preserved an
imperturbable courage. Desperate measures were
all that were left. He ordered the carpenters
and the pioneers, ready with their axes, instantly
to scuttle the lower decks, cut the combings of
the hatches, and open the lower ports to the
full wash of the waves. The alternative now was
between fire or water. If water could only
be persuaded to fight fire (as in the old Arabian
legends), and would then in pity, after her
victory, refrain from sinking that unhappy
vessel, the six hundred souls might still be
saved.

The order was remorseless in its suddenness.
There were a few lives to be sacrificed in order
that many might be saved. The axes went
to work, the timbers crashed in, over them
and through them leaped the water, immediately
drowning several sick soldiers, poor women, and
shrieking children, whose cries were, however,
in a moment stifled.

Colonel Fearon, Captain Bray, and other officers,
as they descended to the   gun-deck to
assist in rapidly opening the ports, met staggering,
in an exhausted and almost senseless state,
through the dense choking smoke, one of
the mates, who had just stumbled over the bodies
of several men who had been suffocated. The
moment the ports were opened the sea rushed in
with cruel and eager force, carrying into the hold
in its irresistible progress huge bulkheads and
ponderous seamen's chests. The soldiers and
sailors, knee-deep in water, tried to cheer each
other by the hope that this immense quantity
of water, which had already in some degree
checked the force of the flames, might soon bring
safety, the danger of the explosion of the spirit-
casks and powder being now diminished.

The treacherous ally had, however, only brought
death in a more sudden and silent form. The
ship became water-logged, and presented many
indications of settling into a terrible quietude,
before going down headlong. A fresh impulse
seized the desperate men; they tried to close
the ports again, to shut down the hatches, to
exclude the external air, and to rather wait for
the slower vengeance of the fire. All hope was
abandoned. Survivors afterwards thought of
the noble lines of the great poet of the day:

Then rose from sea to sky a wild farewell,
Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave.

The upper deck was crowded with more than
six hundred people, many of them sick, risen
half naked from their beds, who were running
about scared, and crying for husbands, children,
and fathers. They were seeking them only to
interchange prayers, and to die in each other's
arms. Many were standing in silent resignation,
some in stupid insensibility to the fast-coming
death; others yielded themselves to
tears, or screamed, and tossed their arms in a
frenzy of despair. Many were on their knees,
shouting prayers and ejaculations from Scripture,
appealing with the most earnest gesticulations
for mercy to Heaven. The Roman Catholic
soldiers were crossing themselves, while a group
of veteran soldiers and stout-hearted sailors, who
had braved death all their lives, and despised his
terrors in whatever shape, threw themselves
down directly over the powder-magazine, in
order to perish instantly in the explosion, now
every moment expected: too brave to rush into