"The others charged them with cowardice in leaving the vessel, said that the wind would go down, and they could get the craft off at flood-tide, and so prevailed over the better judgment of the captain and his companion that they returned to the fated vessel, and prepared, as well as possible, for the returning tide.
"As the tide rose, the sea came with little, if any, diminution of fury; and until nearly midnight Bridges watched the signal lantern, which called in vain for the aid which it was not in the power of man to bestow. Intense cold was added to the other horrors of their situation, and the heavy seas came each hour in lessened fury, as the water thickened into 'sludge.' At eleven o'clock the tide was at its height; the seas had ceased to sweep across the hogged and sunken hull, and a sheet of thin ice reached from the shore to the vessel's side. Captain Coffin tried the ice, and, finding that it would bear his weight, decided to try to reach the Blockhouse Light, which shone brightly three miles away.
"He summoned the others; but two of the others, who had persuaded him to remain on board, were already frozen to death; the third decided to make the attempt, but walked feebly and with uncertain steps, and about a mile from the vessel succumbed to the piercing cold, falling into that fatal sleep from which few ever waken, in this life at least. Coffin's companion, a strong, hardy sailor, reached the light-house alive, but swooned away, and could not be resuscitated; and Coffin barely escaped with his life. He was terribly frost-bitten, but was thawed out in a puncheon of cold water, the right foot, however, dropping off at the ankle; but he escaped with life, after terrible suffering.
"The schooner sank, in the spring, at the edge of the channel, when the moving ice forced her into deeper water; and at very low tides her battered hull may still be seen by the passing boatman. But ever since that fatal night, whenever a storm from that quarter is threatened, a ball of fire is seen to emerge from the depths where lies the fated packet, and to sway and swing above the water, as the signal lantern did on the swaying mast of that doomed vessel. Then, if you but watch patiently, the ball is seen to expand into a sheet of crimson light, terribly and weirdly beautiful, until the eye can discern the shadowy outline of a ship, or rather schooner, of fire, with hull and masts, stays and sails; and then the apparition again assumes the shape of a ball, which is lost in the sea.