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Those on deck looked up, almost paralysed with the terrible spectacle. His destruction seemed inevitable. His hands were giving way. He caught the rope in his teeth, and thus he hung suspended, alive and strong, with the joyous spirits and anticipations of youthful manhood, and yet with death as it were gaping for him. The man nearest to him on the yard threw towards him the end of a rope, but it was blown away to leeward out of his reach. The captain instantly directed that a running bowline knot should be made round the earing, and thus lowered over his head; but his voice was drowned by the gale. Cries of horror escaped from the lips of all who saw him. “A man overboard! a man overboard!” was shouted out, for every one expected to see him fall into the sea. William Ellis had never taken his eye off him. I saw him hurry forward. Poor Harry could hold on no longer. His hands relaxed their gripe of the rope, his teeth gave way, he fell. As he did so, the ship lurched heavily to leeward and he came towards the forecastle. Ellis sprang forward, and as Harry’s feet touched the deck, caught him in his arms. The midshipman’s life was preserved, and the only injury he received was the fracture of one of his ankle-bones. [Note. The whole of this account is fact, without the slightest alteration.] “He’s the only man who could have done it, though,” I afterwards heard some of the seamen remark. “He prayed that he might do it, and he did it, do ye see.” Even the irreligious often acknowledge the efficacy of the prayers of Christian men.

William Ellis persevered in his Christian course till the ship was paid off, when I saw his Mary, who had come to Portsmouth to welcome him. They married; he obtained a warrant as a gunner, and some years afterwards, through the influence of Harry Lethbridge, got a good appointment on shore. The young midshipman, feeling that his life had, through God’s mercy, been preserved that he might do Him service, became a thorough Christian, in practice as well as in name, and a first-rate officer; while Ellis continued as he had begun, aided and encouraged, I have no doubt, by his excellent wife, to the end of his life.

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Note. This account was given to the author by the late Admiral Saumarez, and the words are to the best of his recollection those used by the man who performed the act recorded.