Some lay in disgusting stupidity; others, with fiery faces, blasphemed God. Some, in temporary delirium, fancied themselves in palaces, surrounded by luxury, and brutally abused the servants, who, they supposed, refused to do their bidding.
Others there were, who, amid the beating of that pitiless tempest, believed themselves in the homes that they never more must see, and with hollow, reproachful voices, besought bread, and wondered why water was withheld from them by the hands that were most dear.
A few, whose worst passions were quickened by alcohol to a fiend-like fury, assaulted or wounded those who came in their way, making their shrieks of defiance, and their curses heard above the roar of the storm. Intemperance never displayed itself in more distressing attitudes.
At length, Death began to do his work. The miserable creatures fell every hour upon the deck, frozen, stiff, and hard. Each corpse, as it became breathless, was laid upon a heap of dead, that more space might be left for the survivors. Those who drank most freely, were the first to perish.
On the third day of these horrors, the inhabitants of Plymouth, after making many ineffectual attempts, reached the wreck, not without danger. What a melancholy spectacle! Lifeless bodies, hardened into every form that suffering could devise.
Many lay in a vast pile. Others sat, with their heads reclining on their knees; others, grasping the ice-covered ropes; some in a posture of defence like the dying gladiator: and others, with hands held up to heaven, as if deprecating their awful fate.
Orders were given to search earnestly for every mark or sign of life. One boy was distinguished amid a mass of dead, only by the trembling of one of his eyelids. The poor survivors were kindly received into the houses of the people of Plymouth, and every effort used for their restoration.
The captain and lieutenant, and a few others, who had abstained from the use of ardent spirits, survived. The remainder were buried, some in separate graves, and others in a large pit, whose hollow is still to be seen, on the south-west side of the burial ground in Plymouth.
The funeral obsequies were most solemn. When the clergyman, who was to perform the last services, first entered the church, and saw more than seventy dead bodies; some fixing upon him their stony eyes, and others, with faces, stiffened into the horrible expression of their last mortal agony, he was so affected as to faint.
Some, were brought on shore alive, and received every attention, but survived only a short time. Others, were restored after long sickness, but with limbs so injured by frost, as to become cripples for life.