"The spray was breaking over us so that my wife had to bale continually to keep our craft free, and I dared not leave the helm to lessen sail, although I expected that each slat of the canvas, as we took the wind on the crest of a wave, would run us under, or carry away the mast, and leave us at the mercy of the waves.
"On we went before the breeze, darting down into the hollow between two seas, toiling heavily up the next wave, with death apparently close behind on the crests of two or three pursuing breakers, and then, with a puff which made every timber and plank quiver, the gale would almost lift us through a breaking wall of white foam, and, with more or less of the sea aboard, away we would go down the incline, a plaything of a boat, with a frightened little man at the tiller, and a little woman baling incessantly, with nerves that never gave way for a moment in our long struggle for life.
"I felt that if I could get that sprit down we were safe; but my wife dared not attempt it, and she would not trust herself at the tiller. Fortunately the boat steered 'very small,' and seizing my opportunity, I set the tiller amidships, darted forward, cleared the end of the sprit from its becket, and got back just in time to meet her as she began to broach to, on the crest of a wave, which nearly half filled us with water.
"I felt now as if we were safe; for no longer cumbered with a press of sail, we shipped less water, and had a better chance to lay out our course. Keeping Point Prime Light, as I supposed, well to starboard, I headed up the bay, seeking to make the Blockhouse Light, when suddenly I saw the coast dead ahead, and a bar, which must have been the West Bar, which I dared not attempt to cross.
"I therefore bore away until I made a harbor, and running in, got aboard a vessel, from whose captain I learned that we had mistaken the Blockhouse Light for that on Point Prime, and had at last made Crapaud River."
"Leaving the boat to be brought around by the next steamer, we drove up to town the next day, and found, to our surprise, that we had crossed close on the heels of that hurricane, which unroofed so many buildings, and uprooted so many trees. I consider that passage as the most stirring incident in my short life, gentlemen, and in the language of an old story, 'my wife thinks so, too.'"