Wreckage

“ A mass of wreckage consisting of a small tree and a quantity of newly cut timber had come down the stream and become caught among the jagged rocks above the Bend, and in the midst of this wreckage, with the water rushing and foaming all around them, were a man and a boy, struggling wildly to save themselves from drowning! ”

“ They might be alive in the wreck! As long as they breathe, the Lord of Flame rules them!"
I started the generators, and the Omnimobile rolled heavily down across the green slope, and through the fringe of flaming purple trees. In a few minutes we came upon the wreck of the silver car, a great tangle of twisted wreckage, half fused by the electricity, and bent and torn by the fall. It lay in the little open space, with a great tree splintered and smoking under it, and the ground about empurpled with fallen petals. The twisted metal plates gleamed brightly in the light of the scarlet sky. ”

“ Much to my surprise there was only slight suction. There were explosions out of the funnels as the cold water mixed with the{87} steam and that added to the horror of the disaster. The mass of wreckage was tremendous. Aside from the people brought out with it, there were deck chairs, oars, boxes, and I can’t remember what. I simply know that one moment one was jammed between large objects, and the next moment one was under the water. There were many people around you who needed assistance, but all one could do was to push an oar or box or a piece of wreckage to each to grab. ”

“ Often repeated attempts have to be made before a wreck can be reached, and even then the greatest care must be exercised to avoid collision with the plunging hull or injury from floating wreckage and falling spars. When the benumbed and exhausted crew and passengers, who have usually sought refuge in the rigging from the overwhelming seas, have been taken off, the difficult return to shore yet remains. ”

“ At the crash she had rushed to the deck in night attire, and this action resulted in her rescue.
MANY INJURED
Then came the long row of stretchers with their inert occupants. Every man was alive, but in many cases that was all. In spite of arms and legs broken in the grinding of wreckage, many of these cripples had remained afloat long enough to be seen and gathered in. ”

“ Most of their boats had been wrecked by the explosions of ammunition as the fire reached it, and most of the crew were in the water, some with life preservers, and others clinging to bits of floating wreckage. It was like going through a barrage to get near them. But we lowered our boats and finally got the last man safely aboard. ”

“ The only trouble with this is that a nineteen thousand ton ship, when destroyed by an explosion, is certain to leave a great mass of surface wreckage, which will drift ashore sooner or later or be observed by passing vessels in any travelled lane. ”

“ Wreck′er, a person who purposely causes a wreck or who plunders wreckage: one who lures a ship on to the rocks for purposes of plunder: one who criminally ruins anything: a person employed by the owners in recovering disabled vessels or their cargo.—adj. ”

“ Well, there is not much use, I believe, in keeping them out longer in this fog. Some of them may get lost. Call them back, but station lookouts [176] with orders to report at once anything that looks like floating wreckage to which a person might cling. ”

“ She will go out to the locality where the ‘Soledad’ sank; there is a great deal of wreckage there which has undoubtedly been seen from ashore. I am depending upon the curiosity of my countrymen to see the ill-fated spot. ”

“ His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another. ”

“ Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But, a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge. ”

“ Hear the thud and the crash of the engines as, overbalanced, they tore themselves from their beds and hurled themselves across the ship, to pound against the steel sides and burst them with a deadening explosion; hear the horrific cracks as the decks bend; hear, from under water, a mighty explosion, followed quickly by another and another; hear the roar as the fire-spouting funnel tumbles into the sea; hear, above all, the cry torn from a thousand throats as the people on the stern of the boat felt the last tremors, the death-struggles of the leviathan! ”

“ I have read ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ ‘The Wreck of the “Grosvenor,”’ ‘The Sinking of the “Royal George,”’ and wrecks by water-spouts, tidal waves, and every other thing which would knock a ship into a cocked hat, and I’ve classified every sort of wreck under its proper head; and when I’ve found out to what class a wreck belongs, I know all about it. Now, when a man comes here to report a wreck, the first thing he has to do is just to shut down on his story, and to stand up square and answer a few questions that I put to him. ”

“ I was now going, with wind and current, to destruction; and cold, hungry, and fatigued, was obliged again to sit down in the water to rest, when an extraordinary circumstance greatly relieved me. On examining the wreck, to see if it was possible to detach any part of it to steer by, I perceived something loose, entangled in a fork of the wreck, and so carried along. This I found to be a small trunk, bottom upwards, which, with some difficulty, I dragged up upon the barge. ”

“ Think of a shipwreck horror, the stricken vessel floundering through a raging sea, shaken and strained in every joint, amid darkness impenetrable, relieved, no, intensified, by the lightning's glare, and quivering with the thunder's crash, and on her decks a wailing company, waiting for death to come to them from the fire within her or from the storm without. ”

“ A shout of joy rose up from the crowd upon the beach, and it must have been answered by those on the wreck, but every sound was lost in the roaring of the wind and of the angry waves. In an instant a stronger line was attached, and to that, after being drawn on board and securely fastened to the mast, a little car was attached and was quickly drawn on board. ”

“ The boatswain forward labors desperately to return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair rule again.
The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and burst open with the strain. ”

“ When we are safe afloat give us your lee to work in all you can, and hang her up in the wind to windward of the wreck all you know. While you are there don't spare oil; let it come down to her and us. It is possible that we may not be able to get a line to the wreck, but we'll go under her stern and try. With all her yards and gear in the sea it won't be possible to get right in her lee, so we may have to call to them to jump. My reckonin' is that we may pick up some that way before we get too far to loo'ard. ”

“ To five-and-twenty souls did that thin line, shot over the wreck by means of a rocket, carry life and hope, and heartily their fellow-men worked to save them from the sea that fought hard to take them for its prey; and when, at last, nearly every man had come ashore upon the frail bridge of hemp, the waves seemed to tear at the wreck with redoubled fury, piling mountains of foaming water upon it, leaping upon the deck, or lifting the hull to dash it again upon the cruel rocks that were gnawing their way through the bottom. ”

“ Some leaped into the sea, anticipating that death which was about to reach them; others, more successful, swam to fragments of the wreck; while the shrouds, yards and ropes, along the side of the vessel, were covered with the crew crowding upon them, and hanging there, as if hesitating which alternative of destruction to choose, equally imminent and equally terrible. ”

“ A silent, voiceless, mouldering wreck is an object that excites melancholy thoughts at all times; but in the situation in which I was then placed, there was something also exciting and solemnizing in the discovery; and for a time I forgot even to look for a passing ship in the new and strange interest this old and weedy hull of antique form roused within me.
I remembered the brass cannon which was lying on the shore inscribed La Lima, and one or two guns that could be seen lying on the layers of shells beside the wreck, were exactly of the same form and size. ”

“ It was not easy to be sure of what one saw in that brief time and amid that boiling foam and those lunging waves; but it seemed that two or three caught hold, and again and again it appeared that all were shaken off. They were so covered with water that one could not tell. Probably one was crushed, as it appeared when the spar bumped into the wreck.
We could distinctly hear men left in the rigging praying and one strong voice cursing.
The wreck was setting with that—no, this isn't a freak phrase—with that slow rapidity that comes over a ship, which, having struggled valiantly, gives up. ”

“ The sea was strewed with spars, masts, chests, boats stove in or otherwise injured, casks, empty hencoops, and innumerable pieces of floating wreck, that were continually dashed against the rocks, or were washed ashore, wherever an opening for the sea presented itself. At a little distance lay the remains of a fine ship, her masts gone by the board, her decks open, in fact a complete wreck, over which the sea had but lately been making a clean sweep, carrying overboard everything that could not resist its fury. ”

“ Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid-sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. ”

“ What strange and appalling noises are heard on board a ship laboring in a storm—the cracking of timber, the creaking of elastic planks, the rattling of the cordage, the flapping of fragments of sails, the failing of spars, the rolling of casks got loose, and at times a tremendous crash throughout the vessel, as if the whole framework were giving way and the very sides collapsing! ”

“ After observing this fragment of the wreck attentively for some time, I thought I perceived a man moving among the tangled collection of timbers and ropes and sails, endeavoring to extricate himself. Whatever it might be, it was some distance above the sea,—so high, indeed, that the waves no longer washed it fairly,—only the spray. ”

“ When that wintry storm had passed away, the timbers of a wreck were found strewing the inhospitable shore, with here and there a dead body clinging to a fragment of a spar, but neither man nor child survived to tell how agonizingly they struggled against their fate, to practise the reformation which they had promised in their hour of bitter need. ”

“ We began to fear some disaster had befallen them. While watching the wreck, we saw from behind a wooded point to the right a large canoe make its appearance, then another, and another, till a dozen were collected. It was too probable that some treachery was intended. We fired three muskets in quick succession, in hopes of calling the attention of the seamen. No sooner did the savages hear the sound of the fire-arms than they paddled away towards the wreck. They had got nearly up to it, when the seamen came on deck, and stared wildly around them, making all sorts of frantic gestures. ”

“ In addition to their personal sufferings, the spectacle around was one of such desolation and horror as no man can witness without pain. The shore, as far as the eye could reach, was covered with wrecks, and with the bodies of the dying and the dead, while the roaring of the surf, and the howling of the tempest, mingled with the piercing cries of those on board the stranded vessels, who were yet struggling with their fate, added to the awfulness of the scene. ”

“ High, high she rises, till half her length is in the air over the crest of the wave, and then down she sinks; then the crash comes. Waves dash over her, her masts fall, her boats are wrenched from her sides, and the next minute we see her, a tangled mass of wreck and cordage, firmly embedded on the pitiless rocks. ”

“ As the wreck of a man was flung like a limp bagful into the ascending convolutions of tawny dust, the watchful guards as one dashed in with their ropes whirling, hissing, but not till Waltzing Jupiter had swirled in midair and, infuriated, maddened, doped brute that he was, dived to make the kill. ”

“ Some are, it is true—when a storm rages with extreme fury, “blowing great guns,” as the seamen phrase it, and blowing a ship almost to atoms. These events, however, are extremely rare, and bear but a small proportion to the number of wrecks that take place within sight of the shore, and frequently upon the beach itself. It is in “castaways” of this kind, that the greatest number of lives are sacrificed, under circumstances when, by a knowledge of the art of swimming, many of them might have been saved. ”