Rushing at the ship like a battering-ram, he hit her fair on the weather bow and stove it in, after which he dived and disappeared.

The horrified men took to their boats at once, and in _ten minutes_ the ship went down.
The condition of the men thus left in three open boats far out upon the sea, without provisions or shelter, was terrible indeed.

Some of them perished, and the rest, after suffering the severest hardships, reached a low island called Ducies on the 20th of December.

It was a mere sand-bank, which supplied them only with water and sea-fowl.

Still even this was a mercy, for which they had reason to thank God; for in cases of this kind one of the evils that seamen have most cause to dread is the want of water.
Three of the men resolved to remain on this sand-bank, for dreary and uninhabited though it was, they preferred to take their chance of being picked up by a passing ship rather than run the risks of crossing the wide ocean in open boats, so their companions bade them a sorrowful farewell, and left them.