”‘Land right ahead,’ sang out a man forward.
”‘Land on the starboard bow,’ cried another.
”‘Land on the larboard bow,’ exclaimed a third.
”‘Then we are lost!’ shrieked out many voices, in an agony of despair.
“Onward we drove before the hurricane. ‘Breakers on the starboard and larboard bows,’ cried the first mate, who had rushed forward to look out for any passage among the reefs through which to steer the ship, while I, with the third mate and another hand, went to the helm.
“The darkness of the night came down, and added to the horrors of the scene. ‘Breakers right ahead!’ he shouted; ‘all’s lost!’ He had scarcely uttered the words when the ship struck with tremendous violence on some rocks; the sea lifted her, but it was to let her fall with still greater force, amid a foaming caldron of waters. The surges fiercely broke over us, and washed man after man from his hold. Shrieks and cries rose on every side from the manly bosoms which had never before felt fear.
“The captain stood firm, clasping his wife in his arms, for she had from the first refused to go below. His countenance, as the lightning flashed brightly round him, looked deadly pale; she had fainted, and was happily senseless. A third time the ship lifted, and down she came with a tremendous crash, every timber in her parting at the instant. Two things I saw at that awful moment: the despairing countenance of the captain as the foaming waves whirled him and her he loved away in their wild embrace, his starting eyeballs to the last fixed on the malignant features of the fearful witch, whom I beheld sailing round us in her skiff, unharmed, among the breakers, her loud shrieks of triumphant laughter sounding high above the roaring of the tempest.
“Notwithstanding the horrors of the scene, the principle of self-preservation prompted me to seize a plank, and supported by it, I found myself, I scarcely know how, carried by the waves on to a sandy beach. A rock was near. I climbed to its summit, and from thence I beheld, amid successive flashes of lightning, the old witch whirling her staff in triumph over her head, while her skiff scudded at lightning speed in the direction of Cape Horn. I was on an uninhabited island. I searched anxiously on every side to see if any of my shipmates had escaped, but alas! none appeared, and I discovered with sorrow that I was the sole survivor of the Chameleon’s gallant crew.
“After living some months on the island, I was taken off, and in two years found my way back to Liverpool. I had the curiosity to make inquiries for old Dame Kirby, and learned that she had been for months absent from home, and that nobody knew what had become of her, but that at length she returned, and was heard to boast that she had been doing a deed much to her satisfaction, but would tell no one what it was. I inquired the date of her return; it was exactly five days after our shipwreck, so that although she must have made a quick passage, there could be no longer any doubt on the mind of a reasonable man that she had been the cause of all the disasters which had happened to us, and of the destruction of the Doomed Ship.”
