APRIL 24.
Though the gale was itself sufficiently serious, its effects at
first were ludicrous enough ; but yesterday it produced a conse-quence truly shocking and alarming. Edward Sadler, the second
mate, was at breakfast in the steerage : the boatswain had been
cutting some beef with a large case-knife, which he had afterput down
upon the chest on which
they were sitting; a sudden
heel of the ship threw them all to the other side of the cabin;
the knife fell with its haft against the ladder; and poor Edward
falling against it, at least three inches of the blade were forced
into his right side. The wound was dressed without the loss of
a moment : but from its depth, the jaggedness of the weapon
with which it was made, and from a pain which immediately
afterwards seized the poor fellow in his chest, the apothecary
thinks that his recovery is very improbable : he says that he
liver is certainly perforated, and so probably are the lungs. If
the latter have exscaped, it must have been only by the breadth
of a hair. every one in the ship is distressed beyond measure
a this accident, for the young man is a universal favourite. He
is but just one-and-twenty, good-looking, with manners much
superior to his station, and so unusually steady as well as active,
that if Providence grants him life he cannot fail to, raise himself
in his profession.
