resumed his seat, and floated safely till
daybreak.

Mr. Lawrence Duckworth has left a vivid
picture of the horrors of that night. He and
some fifty others still clung to the wreck, and,
before one by one died and dropped away, his
ear grew so familiar with the awful indications
of death under such circumstances, that he
knew when the fatal moment was approaching.
"There was," he observes, "a hissing sound
made by their lengthened gasps, which became
more and more laborious, and ended in a short
convulsion. The body became quickly rigid,
and the clutch of the hands was more unyielding
than in life." An old man died first, and
the waves took him off his feet. He had hold
of the binnacle and of Mr. Duckworth.  This
threatened to involve Mr. Duckworth in the
fate of the old man, for the additional distress
which such a burden occasioned was very
severe; and it was not without great difficulty
that he at length shook him off—or, rather, tore
him away—for the portion of Mr. Duckworth's
clothes, by which he held when living, was
retained in his lifeless grasp. Mr. Foster's
servant was the next victim, and Mr. Duckworth
was reduced to the painful necessity of using
similar means to disencumber himself of the
body. The man above him, too, after a
struggle of amazing duration, considering the
ceaseless exertion which his trying situation
required, died in the same horrible manner as the
unhappy beings just described; and, as with
them, his hands retained the grapple which had
been strongly put forth in the pangs of death,
and it was some time before the waves tore him
from the rope and freed Mr. Duckworth from
the horror and danger of frequent and violent
contact with the body.

One by one the survivors were taken away,
till only Mr. Duckworth and the three sailors
on the mast were left. Dreading the rising tide,
Duckworth called to them to fling him a rope
that he might raise himself; but they refused,
and in a few minutes an immense sea broke over
the wreck, with a force which threatened at once
to shatter it to atoms. On partially recovering
from this terrible shock, Mr. Duckworth saw
that the mast was gone. It had been swept
away to some distance from the wreck, to which,
however, it was attached by some ropes, and the
three men were still fastened to the places they
occupied when the spar was erect.

Twice only during the night Duckworth felt
hopeless: first, when his wife was torn from
him; then, when the mast fell and left him
alone. But the prevailing impression upon his
mind during so many hours of trial was, that
he should eventually be saved; and this
impression, it seems, which no doubt instrumentally
contributed to save him, had been made by
a dream he had the night before he embarked
in the Rothsay Castle. "This dream," says
Mr. Duckworth, "which I thought nothing of
when I arose from the slumber in which it was
presented, occurred to me from time to time
while I was upon the wreck; it forced itself
upon my recollection when my companions were
dropping on every side of me into the sea:

    Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it;
         The winds did sing it to me.

It was with me when I was alone—when I
seemed, indeed, shut out from the living and
engulfed by surrounding waters. I thought still
of my dream, and gave it literal interpretation,
believing it sent by Providence to afford me a
sustaining assurance of protection and ultimate
deliverance from peril."

Nearly half an hour after the foremast fell,
Mr. Duckworth's heart leaped for joy to see a
boat near Penmaen Point. His eyes were on
it; she was steering for the Sound! No, thank
God, it was for the wreck. Duckworth then
shouted to the men on the mast to keep up
their spirits. It afterwards appeared that, about
five o'clock, a pilot on Penmaen Point had
seen through his glass what he considered
was a fishing-vessel trolling over the Dutchman's
Bank, towards Conway Bay. It
surprised him, however; he looked keener, and
saw it was a mast with men clinging to it.
The mast fell five minutes after; had he looked
those few minutes later, the four men would
have been lost. Two other pilots then joined
him, launched a boat and bore down the two
miles to the wreck. They were astonished at
Duckworth's escape, and with difficulty got him
into the boat; the three sailors were found
in a knot, with their arms laced for united
warmth and protection. Believing all the rest
had perished, the boat steered for Beaumaris;
near this place the pilot picked up Mr. Tinne
insensible, but holding tightly to a spar.

In the mean time the poop-deck raft was
overcrowded, and there was a fear that it would
sink. Mr. Coxhead had recovered consciousness
in time to see eight or nine persons drop
off one after the other from the mainmast, and
as Mr. Hammond was rescued and drawn upon
the raft after some objections for fear of
overcrowding. They then paddled the raft towards
Conway, and Miss Whitehead, almost naked
as she was, lent her white petticoat, for the
double purpose of sail and signal. Two men
held up this, while four others worked at the
paddles. The Penmaen boat did not see them,
but they had hope now, for they could see the
smoke of houses and discern people walking in
the Caernarvonshire fields. Presently a life-boat
pushed out of Beaumaris. Mr. Walker, a young
collegian, had seen them through a telescope
from Beaumaris-green.

"Help the lady first," was the sailors' cry.
They placed her in the boat, wrapped in their
jackets. Mr. Whitehead was nearly dead, so
he was lifted in next. The first exclamation of
one of the life-boat men, when he heard the
wreck was the wreck of the Rothsay Castle,
was:

"I knew this would be the end of her; I
left her last week on that account."

The bodies, as they were washed on shore,
were placed in the Shire-hall, till they could be