Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v3p1.djvu/128

a little sleep. Never, perhaps, was witnessed a finer scene than on the deck of my little ship, when all hope of life had left us. Noble as the character of the British sailor is always allowed to be in cases of danger, yet I did not believe it to be possible, that amongst forty-one persons, not one repining word should have been uttered. The officers sat about, wherever they could find shelter from the sea, and the men lay down, conversing with each other with the most perfect calmness. Each was at peace with his neighbour and all the world, and I am firmly persuaded that the resignation which was then shown to the will of the Almighty was the means of obtaining his mercy. At about 6 p.m., the rudder, which had already received some very heavy blows, rose, and broke up the after-lockers, and this was the last severe shock the ship received. We found by the well that she made no water, and by dark she struck no more. God was merciful to us, and the tide, almost miraculously, fell no lower. At dark, heavy rain fell, but was borne with patience, for it beat down the gale, and brought with it a light air from the northward. At 9 p.m., the water had deepened to five fathoms. The ship kept off the ground all night, and our exhausted crew obtained some broken rest.

“At 4 a.m., on the 2d, on weighing the best bower, we found it had lost a fluke; and by 8, we had weighed the two other anchors and the stream, which were found uninjured. The land was now more clearly visible, and the highest surf I ever saw was still breaking on it, and on some shoals about half a mile from the shore. Not a single green patch could be seen on the flat shingle beach; and our sense of deliverance was doubly felt from the conviction that if any of us should have lived to reach the shore, the most wretched death by starvation would have been inevitable. In standing out from our anchorage, which. in humble gratitude for our delivery, I named the ‘Bay of God’s Mercy,’ we saw the buoy of the anchor we had lost, in 10 fathoms, and weighed it by the buoy-rope, losing therefore only one bower-anchor. An occasional glimpse of the sun enabled us to determine the situation of our recent anchorage, which was in lat. 63° 35; 48", long. 86° 32'. The land all round it was so low, that it was scarcely visible from the deck at five miles’ distance, while the point which I had taken for Cape Fullerton, and which I named after Mr. Kendall, was higher than the coast of Southampton hitherto seen, although still low land. The extreme of the right side of the bay was named after Lieutenant Manico. The land of the Bay of God’s Mercy lies immediately in the centre of the ‘Welcome’, which is, in consequence, considerably and most dangerously narrowed by it. Hence it is evident that, although Southampton Island is laid down with a continuous outline, it has in fact never been seen except at its southern extreme. This but too clearly established fact could not fail to cause me great anxiety, and we were only enabled to run during the daylight, and not even then if the weather proved thick, for our compasses being of no use, we were helpless when the sun was clouded. In addition to