[2349] but the next wave swallowed them up. Margaret sank at once. When last seen, she had been seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white nightdress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders. It was over,—that twelve hours communion, face to face, with Death! It was over! and the prayer was granted, ‘that Ossoli, Angelo, and I, may go together, and that the anguish may be brief!’
A passage from the journal of a friend of Margaret, whom the news of the wreck drew at once to the scene, shall close this mournful story:—
The hull of the Elizabeth, with the foremast still bound to it by cordage, lies so near the shore, that it seems as if a dozen oar-strokes would carry a boat alongside. And as one looks at it glittering in the sunshine, and rocking gently in the swell, it is hard to feel reconciled to our loss. Seven resolute men might have saved every soul on board. I know how different was the prospect on that awful morning, when the most violent gale that had visited our coast for years, drove the billows up to the very foot of the sand-hills, and when the sea in foaming torrents swept across the beach into the bay behind. Yet I cannot but reluctantly declare my judgment, that this terrible tragedy is to be attributed, so far as human agency is looked at, to our wretched system, or no-system, of life-boats. The life-boat at Fire Island light-house, three miles distant only, was not brought to the beach till between twelve and one o'clock, more than eight hours after the Elizabeth was stranded, and more than six hours after the wreck could easily have been seen. When the life-boat did finally
