It was not long before horror seized the seamen themselves, and I heard
the master express this melancholy ejaculation, "Lord have mercy upon
us, we shall be all, lost and undone!" For my part, sick unto death, I
kept my cabin till the universal and terribly dreadful apprehensions of
our speedy fate made me get upon deck; and there I was affrighted
indeed. The sea went mountains high: I could see nothing but distress
around us; two ships had cut their masts on board, and another was
foundered; two more that had lost their anchors, were forced out to the
mercy of the ocean; and to save our lives we were forced to cut our
foremast and mainmast quite away.

Who is their so ignorant as not to judge of my dreadful condition? I was
but a fresh-water sailor and therefore it seemed more terrible. Our ship
was very good, but over-loaded; which made the sailors often cry out,
"She would founder!" Words I then was ignorant of. All this while the
storm continuing, and rather increasing, the master and the most sober
part of his men went to prayers, expecting death every moment. In the
middle of the night one cried out, "We had sprung a leak;" another,
"That there was four feet water in the hold." I was just ready to expire
with fear, when immediately all hands were called to the pump; and the
men forced me also in that extremity to share with them in their labour.
While thus employed, the master espying some light colliers, fired a gun
as a signal of distress; and I, not understanding what it meant, and
thinking that either the ship broke, or some dreadful thing happened,
fell into a swoon. Even in that common condition of woe, nobody minded
me, excepting to thrust me aside with their feet, thinking me dead, and
it was a great while before I recovered.

Happy it was for us, when, upon the signal given, they ventured out
their boats to save our lives. All our pumping had been in vain, and