I sat with the supercargo for about
an hour, watching the flow of the tide. Her timbers cracked louder and
louder at each shock of the breakers; when a heavy sea struck her, her
joints loosened, and she broke up at last, scattered into fragments, and
whelmed in a gulf of boiling waters which foamed like an immense cauldron
over the place she had occupied a minute before. We had watched the
progress to this final disaster with the deepest interest--I may almost
say sympathy--for we could hardly help looking upon the ship as a friend
in need, hovering as it were over destruction without an arm being
stretched forth to save her, and it was not without a real feeling of pain
and sorrow that we witnessed her destruction.
About half-ebb we descended to the shore--it was covered as far as the eye
could reach with her ruin and materials; and one could almost imagine it
had been the destruction of a fleet. Thus ended the fate of _La Bonne
Esperance_ of Brest, and the occasional appearance of a solitary fragment
on the beach, was soon all that recalled her history to the remembrance of
the passers-by.
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