stern gallery. After viewing the rocks for some
time, Captain Pierce asked Mr. Rogers if he
thought there was any possibility of saving the
girls, to which the latter replied, he "feared
there was not," for they could then only
discover the black face of the perpendicular rock,
and not the cavern which afforded shelter to
those who escaped.

The sea continuing to break in very fast, Mr.
M'Manus a midshipman, and Mr. Schutz, a
passenger asked Mr. Rogers what they could
do to escape. He replied, "Follow me!" They
then all went into the stern gallery, from thence
by the weather upper gallery, from there by the
upper quarter gallery up on the poop. Whilst
they were waiting, a heavy sea struck the round-
house, which began to give way. They heard
the ladies shriek at intervals, as if the water had
reached them, the noise of the sea at other times
drowning their voices. Mr. Brimer, the fifth mate,
followed Mr. Rogers to the poop, where they
remained together about five minutes, when, on the
coming on of the last-mentioned sea, they jointly
seized a hencoop, and the same wave which they
apprehended proved fatal to some of those who
remained behind happily carried Brimer and his
companion to the rock, on which they were
dashed with such violence as to be miserably
bruised and hurt. On this rock were twenty-
seven men; it was now low water, and as they
were convinced that upon the flowing of the
tide they must all be washed off, many of them
attempted to get to the back or sides of the
cavern cut of the rush of the returning sea. In
this attempt scarce more than six, besides
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer, succeeded; of the
remainder, some shared the fate which they had
apprehended, and the others perished in their
eflorts to get into the cavern. Mr. Rogers and
Mr. Brimer both, however, reached the cavern
and scrambled up the rock, on the narrow shelves
of which they fixed themselves. Mr. Rogers
got so near to his friend Mr. Meriton as to
exchange congratulations with him; but he was
prevented from joining him by at least twenty
men who were between them, neither of whom
could move without immediate peril of his
life. At the time Rogers reached this
station of possible safety, his strength was so
nearly exhausted that, had the struggle
continued a few minutes longer, he must have been
lost. Many of the men and petty officers
who had reached the shelf below had fallen
back in trying to scale the upper rock. They
were still ignorant of where they were, whether
close to the land or in an inaccessible place.
Cold, half naked, wet with snow and rain, and
chilled by the perpetual breaking of the spray,
huddled on a ledge only fit for sea-birds to rest
upon, death seemed only postponed. They could
yet discern a looming mass of the ship, and
began to pray in their deep pity for the helpless
women, that it might still hold together till the
morning. They sat there, huddled together in
their misery, shuddering at every sea that broke
over the vessel.

The cruel end came at last. A very few
minutes after Mr. Rogers reached the rock,
there rose a horrible piercing shriek from the sea,
louder and longer than any yet heard, and
rendered shriller by a preponderance of women's
voices: the round-house had gone. Then came
a lull and silence, except from the exulting winds
and the triumphant waves: the wreck had
disappeared for ever.

Many of those men who had gained the
cavern, as the night wore on became faint with
fatigue and hunger, bruised by the rocks,
buffeted and tormented by the wind, then let go
their grasp and fell headlong on to the rocks or
into the surf below, perishing at the very feet of
their friends, who could clearly hear their dying
groans or their "gulping exclamations" for
pity and for help. Whose turn was to come
next?

At length, after the bitterest three hours ever
spent, cold day broke, but it came only to show
the full horror and danger of their place of
refuge. There in the cold grey of a January
morning rose a limestone wall some two
hundred feet above their heads in tier upon tier
of huge blocks; strings of ivy, where cables
were wanted; tufts of fern and heather, where
even the stone-chat could not rest. Even
now they must perish; for even had the
country-people been roused by the guns of
distress that they had kept firing for many hours
before the wreck, and the sound of which had
been borne away by the storm, they still could
not be seen from above, as they were engulfed
in a cavern which lay under the cliff, nor did
any part of the wreck remain to point out their
possible refuge. No ropes could be thrown
them there; no boat could live in the sea still
raging; no vessel would be likely to be passing
so soon after such a storm. They had only
been saved, it seemed, to suffer a still more cruel
death than those who had gone down.

The only hope was indeed a desperate one;
it was to creep along the side of the cavern to
its outward extremity, and on a ledge scarcely
as broad as a man's hand to turn the corner and
endeavour to clamber up the almost perpendicular
precipice, whose summit was near two
hundred feet from the base. In this desperate
effort some succeeded, whilst others, trembling
with terror, and their strength exhausted by
mental and bodily fatigue, lost their precarious
footing, and perished. The first brave men who
gained the summit of the cliff were two daring
and sure-footed climbers — the cook and James
Thompson, a quartermaster. By their own
exertions they made their way to the summit, and the
moment they reached it, hastened to the nearest
house, and made known the situation of their
fellow-sufferers. The house at which they first
arrived was Eastington, the present habitation
of Mr. Garland, steward or agent to the
proprietors of the Purbeck quarries, who immediately,
with the most zealous humanity, got
together the workmen under his direction.
Ropes were procured with all possible
despatch, and every precaution taken. Mr.
Meriton had almost reached the edge of the