FORD PAUL
September 27, 1607.
Dead bodies everywhere. The ocean, lashedto fury by the gale of yesterday, camebooming and hissing upon the beach ingreat breakers white with foam; each billowas it dashed upon the jagged and broken rocksbore in its terrible embrace still more human victims,or some portion of the two unlucky ships thatwere fast breaking up. One wedged in betweentwo rocks with just sufficient play to allow of itsheaving from side to side, with every wave thatstruck it. The other and much larger vessel, theQueen Elizabeth, a fine British ship, which hadsailed from England freighted with a cargo of generalmerchandise for the colony of Virginia, wentcrashing up against the cruel stone teeth of thecliff which overhung and projected into the angrysea; dismasted, her bulwarks and rigging torn awayshe floated out into deeper water only to be drivenback again upon the rocks, by the violence of thewind and the rapidly incoming tide.
Another crash and another, the forecastle carriedaway, the decks opening, bales, chests, cordage,stores of all sorts tossed high up on theshore, more dead bodies—chiefly of men, for theyhad some time before given up to the few womenand children the now capsized and shattered boats.All along the shore, as far as eye could see, thebeach was composed of a heterogeneous mass ofenormous fragments of rock thrown together andpiled up on each other, leaving here and there intheir midst a separate pool of sea water; in someof these pools was a dead body or two, but by farthe greater number were lying in every imaginable,distorted position among the huge, irregular blocksof stone. Many, who had been washed in sufficientlyfar to escape drowning, were killed by theforce with which they were dashed on shore: there,with broken bones and gnashed and blood-stainedbodies, they slept in death, like men who had fallenin some great battle. It was noon, but not aray of sunlight glinted across the ghastly scene.Every sound was lost in the terrific roar of thegreat, heaving hills of water, which rolled in continuously;huge masses of wet gray cloud hungover all, obscuring or transforming every visible object.Far up among the shingle lay one humanform which still bore signs of life. It was that ofa young lady, attired in deep mourning, a streamof blood trickled down the pale face, and from timeto time one hand moved convulsively toward adeep cut in her head as if to assuage the pain; presentlyin half-consciousness she whispered "Do nottell my mother I am hurt, it would grieve her.She has had too much sorrow already."
The beloved mother, and all others who had madelife precious to the speaker, had three years previouslybeen tenderly laid to r