spite of the danger in the darkness of floating
wreck, he resolved to wait quietly till daylight,
and ordered his men to shout repeatedly to cheer
any who might be still floating on stray spars.
For a long time no one answered; at last, a
feeble cry came, and the Caroline's sailors
returned it loudly and gladly. What joy that
cry must have brought to those friendly
ears!  With what joy must the boatmen's shout
have been received!

When day broke, the mast was visible, and
four motionless men could be seen among its
cordage and top-work. They seemed dead, but
as the boat neared, two of them feebly raised
their heads and stretched out their arms. When
taken into the boat, they were found to be faint
and almost dead from the cold and wet, and the
many hours they had been half under water.
The other two were stone-dead. One had
bound himself firmly to the spar, and lay as if
asleep, with his arms round it, and his head
upon it, as if it had been a pillow. The other
stood half upright between the cheeks of the
mast, his face fixed in the direction of the boat,
his arms still extended. They were both left
on the spar. One of the Indiaman's empty
boats was also found drifting a short distance
off. The wind beginning to freshen and a gale
coming on, it was all the jolly-boat could do to
rejoin the Caroline. There could be no doubt
that when the Caroline hove-to and luffed
under the lee of the Kent, it must have passed
men drifting to leeward on detached spars.
They of course all perished in the rising storm.

In the mean time, the brig Cambria,
unconscious of these scenes of hope and despair, was
making sail, and running at the rate of ten
knots an hour back to Old England. The shrewd
Yorkshire smelters and brave Cornish miners
having dragged the last of the exhausted
survivors on board, had shared with them their
clothes and provisions, and surrendered their
beds to the naked and half-famished women and
children.

The people of the Kent were still in a
condition of great misery and danger. Even now
their ultimate safety was by no means sure.
A gale of wind was blowing, and six hundred
human beings, several hundred miles from
any accessible port, were crowded into a
small brig of two hundred tons. In a little
cabin, built to hold ten persons, there were
now huddled nearly eighty, who had scarcely
room even to sit. The brig's bulwarks were
driven in, and the seas beat so dangerously that
the hatches could only be lifted off between the
return of the waves. No lights would burn
below in that polluted atmosphere, and the
steam arising from the breathing excited at
one time an apprehension the ship was on fire.
The men on deck were standing half naked, and
ankle-deep in water. Infants were crying for
the milk their mothers could not give them, and
many of the children and elder women were
seized with fits. In the midst of this misery,
a soldier's wife was delivered of a child, which
was christened the Cambria, and survived. If the
wind abated or changed, and the Cambria had
been long kept in the open sea, famine and fever
must have soon claimed their victims.

The gale continued with greater violence,
and Captain Cook, crowding all sail even at the
risk of carrying away his masts, nobly urged
his vessel forward, and on the afternoon of the
3rd the cheering cry from aloft of "Land!
land!" brought joy to every heart. That
evening the Scilly light gleamed out brightly.
and running rapidly along the purple granite
coast, the Cambria joyfully cast anchor in
Falmouth about half-past twelve on the following
morning.

On reviewing this terrible calamity, it will be
seen at once that the same gale which caused
the first accident also contributed to the safety
of the Kent's crew and passengers, as, but for
the heavy rolling that enabled Captain Cobb to
at once inundate the hold, the vessel would
have burnt away before the Cambria's boats could
have reached it. There were also many other
singular and providential circumstances attending
the event. The Cambria, which had been
unexpectedly detained in port nearly a month,
had that morning completely changed her course,
and taken an opposite tack, to give the distressed
and labouring brig some ease. The Kent had
sighted no vessel before, nor did the Cambria
see another till she entered the chops of the
Channel. It was also remarkable that the fire,
though undisturbed, should have been eleven
hours reaching the magazine, the spirit-room,
and the tiller-ropes. Had the Cambria, too, been
homeward-bound, she would not have had food
enough on board for one meal, and if she had
had a full cargo, there would not have been
time in that heavy weather to stow even three
hundred of the six hundred survivors, and
many must have perished.

The people of Falmouth overwhelmed the
sufferers with kindness. The Governor-General
of Pendennis Castle took instant steps for the
disembarkation. The ladies formed, as before,
the vanguard; then came the haggard, cold,
wet, and half-clothed soldiers and sailors; lastly,
the officers, beggared by the loss of their stores,
and on them the compassionate and warm-
hearted Cornish people pressed hats, shoes, and
coats, as soon as they reached the shore. Every
private house was thrown open, subscriptions
were collected, clothes provided for the women
and children, and mourning found for the poor
widows and orphans. The sick and wounded
were sent to the hospital, and the crew sent home
with money provided by Captain Cobb. In all
these good works the Quakers of Falmouth
were especially active.

On the Sunday after their arrival, all the
officers, passengers, ladies, soldiers' wives,
soldiers, and sailors went to church to publicly
thank God for their deliverance, and a touching
sight it was. On the 13th the regiment
embarked for Chatham, where the commander-
in-chief allowed them a period of relaxation and
rest before they re-embarked for India and
China.