We Durst Not Put Into The Straits For
Lack Of Ground Tackle, Neither Durst We Carry Sail, The Tempest Being
Very Furious, And Our Sails Very Bad.
In this extremity the pinnace bore
up to us, informing she had received many heavy seas, and that her
Ropes
were continually failing, so that they knew not what to do; but, unable
to afford her any relief; we stood on our course in view of a lee shore,
continually dreading a ruinous end of us all. The 4th October the storm
increased to an extreme violence; when the pinnace, being to windward,
suddenly struck a hull, when we thought she had sustained some violent
shock of a sea, or had sprung a leak, or that her sails had failed,
because she did not follow us. But we durst not hull in this
unmerciful storm, sometimes trying under our main-course, sometimes
with a haddock of our sail; for our ship was very leeward, and
laboured hard in the sea. This night we lost sight of the pinnace, and
never saw her again.
The 5th October, our foresail split, on which our master brought the
mizen-sail to the foremast to make the ship work, and we mended our
foresail with our spritsail. The storm still continued to rage with the
most extreme fury, with hail, snow, rain, and wind, such and so mighty
that it could not possibly in nature be worse; the seas running so
lofty, and with a continual breach, that we many times were in doubt
whether our ship did sink or swim.
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