We were now uncertain of our distance from a place of safety; the surf
burst over the vessel in a dreadful cascade, the crew despairing and
clinging to her sides to avoid its violence, while the ship was breaking
up with a rapidity and crashing noise, which added to the roaring of the
breakers, drowned the voices of the officers. The masts were cut away to
ease the ship, and the cutter cleared from the booms and launched from
the lee-gunwale. When the long wished-for dawn at last broke on us,
instead of alleviating, it rather added to, our distress. We found the
ship had run on the south-easternmost extremity of a coral reef,
surrounding on the eastern side those sand-banks or islands in the
Indian ocean, called Cargados, Carajos: the nearest of these was about
three miles distant, but not the least appearance of verdure could be
discovered, or the slightest trace of anything on which we might hope to
subsist. In two or three places some pyramidical rocks appeared above
the rest like distant sails, and were repeatedly cheered as such by the
crew, till it was soon perceived they had no motion, and the delusion
vanished. The masts had fallen towards the reef, the ship having
fortunately canted in that direction, and the boat was thereby protected
in some measure from the surf. Our commander, whom a strong sense of
misfortune had entirely deprived of mind so necessary on these
occasions, was earnestly requested to get into the boat, but he would
not, thinking her unsafe. He maintained his station on the mizen
top-mast that lay among the wreck to leeward; the surf which was rushing
round the bow and stern continually overwhelming him. I was myself close
to him on the same spar, and in this situation we saw many of our
shipmates meet an untimely end, being either dashed against the rocks or
swept over by the breakers. The large cutter, full of officers and men,
now cleared a passage through the mass of wreck, and being furnished
with oars, watched the proper moment and pushed off for the reef, which