Accidents > Dangers of the deep, or, Narratives of shipwreck and adventure at sea

BURNING OF THE
mentation, that gradually subsided to its for¬
mer stillness.
But it was not till the close of this mourn¬
ful tragedy that backwardness, rather than
impatience, to adopt the perilous and only
means of escape that offered, became generally
discernible on the part of the unhappy rem¬
nant still on board, and that made it not
only imperative on Captain Cobb to reiterate
his threats, as well as his entreaties, that
not an instant should be lost, but seemed
to render it expedient for one of the officers
of the troops, who had expressed his inten¬
tion of remaining to the last, to limit, in the
hearing of those around him, the period of his
own stay. Seeing, however, between nine
and ten o’clock, that some individuals were
consuming the precious moments, by obsti¬
nately hesitating to proceed, while others
were making the inadmissible request to be
lowered down as the women had been ; learn¬
ing from the boatmen that the wreck, which
was already nine or ten feet below the ordi
nary water mark, had sunk two feet lower
since their last trip ; and calculating, besides,
that the two boats then under the stem, with
that which was in sight on its return from the