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

KENT EAST INDIAMAN.
alternately flowed, like a tide, in the breasts of
the unhappy females onboard the brig, during
the many hours of torturing suspense in which
several of them were unavoidably held re¬
specting the fate of their husbands; feelings
which were inconceivably excited, rather than
soothed, by the idle and erroneous rumours
occasionally conveyed to them, regarding the
state of the Kent. But still less can I at¬
tempt to pourtray the alternate pictures of
awful joy, and of wild distraction, exhibited
by the sufferers, (for both parties for the mo¬
ment seemed equally to suffer,) as the ter¬
rible truth was communicated, that they and
their children were indeed left husbandless
and fatherless; or as the objects from whom
they had feared they were for ever severed,
suddenly rushed into their arms.
But these feelings of delight, whatever may
have been their intensity, were speedily chas¬
tened, and the attention of all arrested, by
the last tremendous spectacle of destruction.
After the arrival of the last boat, the flames,
which had spread along the upper deck and
poop, ascended with the rapidity of lightning
to the masts and rigging, forming one general
conflagration, that illumined the heavens to an