SAFE ON SHORE. 68

rowing very heartily, and venturing their lives to save ours, our
men cast them a rope over the stern with a buoy to it, and then
veered it out a great length, which they, after great labour and
hazard, took hold of, and we hauled them close under our stern,
and got all into their boat. It was to no purpose for them or us
after we were in the boat to think of reaching to their own ship,
so all agreed to let her drive, and only to pull her in towards shore
as much as we could; and our master promised them, that if the
boat was staved upon shore, he would make it good to their
master; so, partly rowing and partly driving, our boat went away
to the northward, sloping towards the shore almost as far as
Winterton Ness.

We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our
ship when we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time
what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea. I must acknow-
ledge I had hardly eyes to look up when the seamen told me she
was sinking; for from that moment they rather put me into the
boat than that I might be said to go in. My heart was, as it
were, dead within me, partly with fright, partly with horror of
mind and the thoughts of what was yet before me.

While we were in this condition, the men yet labouring at the
oar to bring the boat near the shore, we could see, when our boat,
mounting the waves, we were able to see the shore, a great many
people running along the shore to assist us when we should come
near; but we made but slow way towards the shore, nor were we
able to reach the shore, till, being past the lighthouse at Winter-
ton, the shore falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the
land broke off a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in,
and though not without much difficulty, got all safe on shore, and
walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate
men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the magistrates
of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular
merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient
to carry us either to London or back to Hull, as we thought fit.

Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have
gone home, I had been happy, and my father, an emblem of our

blessed Saviour’s parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me;
4284) 5