still lurks amongst the people, and sometimes breaks out with unabated
violence.

The arrival of a party of the Preventive Service that evening, in some
measure proved a check to the plunder of the peasantry; but the guards
themselves were not proof against the prevailing infection, and similar
scenes to that related, prevailed as long as there was any thing left to
drink or pick up; however, a considerable part of the cargo was safely
stowed, though there were few of the rum casks that did not afterwards
turn out impregnated with bilge water.

On a fine grey morning, about a week after these events occurred, I
wandered out towards the shore: there had been rough weather in the
channel, and many wrecks, and the turbulence of the ocean had not yet
subsided. It was about half-flood when I reached the _Bonne Esperance_.
She had disappeared by piece-meal under the repeated assaults of the sea,
but the principal part of the hull was still hanging together. Each wave
as it struck her tattered timbers, seemed to sap away her strength and
threatened to shake her to fragments. I sat with the supercargo for about
an hour, watching the flow of the tide. Her timbers cracked louder and
louder at each shock of the breakers; when a heavy sea struck her, her
joints loosened, and she broke up at last, scattered into fragments, and
whelmed in a gulf of boiling waters which foamed like an immense cauldron
over the place she had occupied a minute before. We had watched the
progress to this final disaster with the deepest interest--I may almost
say sympathy--for we could hardly help looking upon the ship as a friend
in need, hovering as it were over destruction without an arm being
stretched forth to save her, and it was not without a real feeling of pain
and sorrow that we witnessed her destruction.