Of her whole complement
of nearly eighty, four souls were cast alive on the beach; and the bodies
of the remainder were, by the voluminous outpouring of the flooded
streams, scoured at last from the harbour, and strewed naked on the
seaboard of the island.
Five ships were immediately menaced with the same destruction. The
_Eber_ vanished--the four poor survivors on shore--read a dreadful
commentary on their danger; which was swelled out of all proportion by
the violence of their own movements as they leaped and fell among the
billows. By seven the _Nipsic_ was so fortunate as to avoid the reef and
beach upon a space of sand; where she was immediately deserted by her
crew, with the assistance of Samoans, not without loss of life. By about
eight it was the turn of the _Adler_. She was close down upon the reef;
doomed herself, it might yet be possible to save a portion of her crew;
and for this end Captain Fritze placed his reliance on the very hugeness
of the seas that threatened him. The moment was watched for with the
anxiety of despair, but the coolness of disciplined courage. As she rose
on the fatal wave, her moorings were simultaneously slipped; she broached
to in rising; and the sea heaved her bodily upward and cast her down with
a concussion on the summit of the reef, where she lay on her beam-ends,
her back broken, buried in breaching seas, but safe.
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