"The Centaur laboured so much, that I could scarce hope she would swim till morning: ... our sufferings for want of water were very great....
"The weather again threatened, and by noon it blew a storm. The ship laboured greatly; the water appeared in the fore and after-hold. I was informed by the carpenter also that the leathers were nearly consumed, and the chains of the pumps, by constant exertion, and friction of the coils, were rendered almost useless....
"At this period the carpenter acquainted me that the well was stove in.... and the chain-pumps displaced and totally useless.... Seeing their efforts useless, many of them [the people] burst into tears, and wept like children....
"I perceived the ship settling by the head."—"Loss of the Centaur," Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, iii. pp. 45-49.]
[BD] {92}'T is ugly dying in the Gulf of Lyons.—[MS.]
[106] {93}[Byron may have had in mind the story of the half-inaudible vow of a monster wax candle, to be offered to St. Christopher of Paris, which Erasmus tells in his Naufragium. The passage is scored with a pencil-mark in his copy of the Colloquies.]
[107] [Stanza xliv. recalls Cardinal de Retz's description of the storm at sea in the Gulf of Lyons: "Everybody were at their prayers, or were confessing themselves.... The private captain of the galley caused, in the greatest height of the danger, his embroidered coat and his red scarf to be brought to him, saying, that a true Spaniard ought to die bearing his King's Marks of distinction. He sat himself down in a great elbow chair, and with his foot struck a poor Neapolitan in the chops, who, not being able to stand upon the Coursey of the Galley, was crawling along, crying out aloud, 'Sennor Don Fernando, por l'amor de Dios, Confession.' The captain, when he struck him, said to him, 'Inimigo de Dios piedes Confession!' And as I was representing to him, that his inference was not right, he said that that old man gave offence to the whole galley. You can't imagine the horror of a great storm; you can as little imagine the Ridicule mixed with it. A Sicilian Observantine monk was preaching at the foot of the great mast, that St. Francis had appeared to him, and had assured him that we should not perish. I should never have done, should I undertake to describe all the ridiculous frights that are seen on these occasions."—Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, 1723, iii. 353.]
[108] {94}["Some appeared perfectly resigned, went to their hammocks, and desired their messmates to lash them in; others were securing themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes. The boats ... were got over the side."—"Loss of the Centaur," Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, iii. 49, 50.]
[BE] Men will prove hungry, even when next perdition.—[MS.]
[109] {95}["Eight bags of rice, six casks of water, and a small quantity of salted beef and pork, were put into the long-boat, as provisions for the whole."—"Wreck of the Sidney, 1806," Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 1812, iii. 434.]