55 . Dezember 1845

a turn and behind us sought to move away in another direction, all of those who had given in to this hope were seized by all the greater despair!

The Captain of that vessel is said to have, as I later learned, when he became aware of our danger, declared to his passengers, "They are lost.” But we did not become lost at this time; for after the passing of a frightening half hour which we endured under a death struggle and anxious anticipation, help appeared-not from people, as we had expected- but from God from His holy height, in that He kept our ship from being wrecked and the boiler from exploding, and brought us successfully across the flat sandbar. At this moment the pilot gave us a notice by a quick movement of his hand, a crack of his finger, and by the friendly cry: "Now we are across the bar, and all saved!” The sad catastrophe now quickly dissolved into the happiest delight and the most heart touching sighs and prayers of thanksgiving toward the Lord and Rescuer of our lives. We now received the instruction to go to the hind part again, actually, everyone to his usual place, My wife with the girls had hardly noticed the horrible blows of the ship, when, seized by the greatest fright, immediately went on deck, but found no one here from whom they should seek consolation and also didn't know where the rest of us had remained. Upon meeting again, I found my wife still very much touched by the deathly fear endured and exceedingly uneasy about our absence, because she didn’t know that all of the men had been directed by the Captain to the inner space of the forepart during the fearful catastrophe. Through rational encouragement she was, however, soon calmed and moved to give thanks to God the mighty and merciful Savior. Soon thereafter we drew near to land upon which several buildings stood beside one another, This was the small tongue of land which separates the Matagorda Bay from the Mexican Gulf and is called Port Caballo; when we had approached the buildings as quickly as possible, the Captain had anchor thrown to spend the night here.