About eight o’clock, loud claps of thunder, each in kind resembling a screech, or the blast of a trumpet, rather than the rumbling sound of thunder in Europe, burst over our heads, and were succeeded by vivid flashes of forked lightning.  We now made every necessary preparation for a storm, by striking the top-gallant-masts, with their yards, close reefing the topsails and foresail, bending the storm-staysail, and battening down the main hatch, over which two tarpaulins were nailed, for the better preservation of the cargo.  We observed innumerable shoals of fishes, the motions of which appeared to be more than usually vivid and redundant.

At twelve o’clock, on my taking charge of the deck, the scene bore a character widely different from that which it presented but three hours before.  We now sailed under close-reefed maintopsail and foresail.  The sea ran high; our bark laboured hard, and pitched desperately, and the waves lashed her sides with fury, and were evidently increasing in force and size.  Over head nothing was to be seen but huge travelling clouds, called by sailors the “scud,” which hurried onwards with the fleetness of the eagle in her flight.  Now and then the moon, then in her second quarter, would show her disc for an instant, but be quickly obscured; or a star of “paly” light peep out, and also disappear.  The well was sounded, but the vessel did not yet make more water than what might be expected in such a sea; we, however, kept the pumps going at intervals, in order to prevent the cargo from sustaining damage.  The wind now increased, and the waves rose higher; about two o’clock A.M. the weather maintopsail-sheet gave way; the sail then split to ribbons, and before we could clue it up, was completely blown away from the bolt-rope.  The foresail was then furled, not without great difficulty, and imminent hazard to the seamen, the storm staysail alone withstanding the mighty wind, which seemed to gain strength every half-hour, while the sea, in frightful sublimity, towered to an incredible height, frequently making a complete breach over our deck.

At four A.M.  I was relieved by Thomson, who at daylight apprized me that the maintopmast was sprung, and that the gale was increasing.  Scarcely had I gone on deck, when a tremendous sea struck us a little “abaft the beam,” carrying every thing before it, and washing overboard hencoops, cables, water-casks, and indeed every movable article on the deck.  Thomson, almost by miracle, escaped being lost; but having, in common with the lascars, taken the precaution to lash a rope round his waist, we were able, by its means, to extricate him from danger; at the same time the vessel made an appalling lurch, lying down on her beam-ends, in which position she remained for the space of two minutes, when the maintopmast, followed by the foretopmast, went by the board with a dreadful crash; she then righted, and we were all immediately engaged in going aloft, and with hatchets