"
"They sank as a matter of course," replied the captain, "and that
like a shot. They will soon rise again, however- but not till the salt
melts."
"The salt!" I ejaculated.
"Hush!" said the captain, pointing to the wife and sisters of the
deceased. "We must talk of these things at some more appropriate
time."
We suffered much, and made a narrow escape, but fortune befriended
us, as well as our mates in the long-boat. We landed, in fine, more
dead than alive, after four days of intense distress, upon the beach
opposite Roanoke Island. We remained here a week, were not ill-treated
by the wreckers, and at length obtained a passage to New York.
About a month after the loss of the "Independence," I happened to
meet Captain Hardy in Broadway. Our conversation turned, naturally,
upon the disaster, and especially upon the sad fate of poor Wyatt. I
thus learned the following particulars.
The artist had engaged passage for himself, wife, two sisters and
a servant. His wife was, indeed, as she had been represented, a most
lovely, and most accomplished woman. On the morning of the
fourteenth of June (the day in which I first visited the ship), the
lady suddenly sickened and died.
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