The screaming gale was an ever-varying shriek through the remains of spar and mast, pushing the barque over until her deck was at a crazy pitch and the ship threatened to roll. The Captain knew the Justine fatally damaged. Instead of rolling over and through the swell she was now twisting and groaning. A chorus of torn wooden sinews.

     Captain Haltman had made no preparations to take to the boats. He'd been sure the worst of the wind would soon pass - yet it had gone on building hour after hour. When he finally gave the word to abandon ship it caused immediate panic. The Master tried to enforce an order that a sea anchor be prepared, to pull the barque back from its precarious lean, but was ignored in a mutinous rush to escape the doomed ship. The ships main-boat and painter were unlashed and manhandled down the deck, the seamen granted unnatural strength by momentous circumstance. The second-boat and punt were also set in the vague lee caused by the crazy pitch of the deck. However before any boat might be launched the gale faltered.

     The ferocious wind trailed away to little more than a strong breeze and the rain stopped, all in the space of a few heartbeats. The seas remained a mass of spume atop a churning swell but the Justine had fallen back from her dangerous lean and there was a moment of near calm. The First Lieutenant and the Master at once reasserted their authority.

     The Officers took to the main-boat after it had been stocked with minor provisions. The second boat and painter were also filled with seamen. Then the captain decided he'd done all he might. Left aboard the doomed ship were only those unwilling, or unable, to save themselves. The ships boys, a crippled carpenter, three from the sickbay and several terrified sailors, all still arguing over the provisioning of the punt.

     The captain ordered his small flotilla to sea, abandoning the weak and tardy to their fate. By his calculations the coast was but a few miles away.

     Not many minutes later the storm returned with a renewed fury, blowing from the opposite quarter. The calm eye of the hurricane had passed and the night was again full of hammering rain and the malevolent shriek of the gale. The three boats were never seen again..

     When dawn finally infiltrated the still wild storm the shattered wreck was hard aground atop a sandbank between two small islands, the mainland less than two leagues distant. After breaking into the captains storeroom, still stocked with long untasted delicacies, the survivors gathered in the remains of Stateroom. Here four able seamen and two lascars, led by a crippled second-mate, washed down cheese, smoked ham, pickles and pβtι, with a dark Jamaican rum. Eating until they could eat no longer and then drinking themselves into insensibility. Every sailor wants to die drunk.

     The next rising of the sun was into an almost clear sky and although the wind was still wild and the sea a mass of choppy waves and spume, the hurricane was dying. About mid-morning the bleary eyed second-mate hobbled above board. After rescuing and broaching a puncheon of water, to slake a raging thirst, he climbed into the dying gale and sat astride a shattered railing to survey their predicament.

     The broken back of the vessel was lying well up on a sand and scree shoal, within two hundred yards of the smallest of two nearby islands. The line of white-water had receded with the falling tide. They were two days short of the neap and the wreck must have been fetched up onto the shoal by one of the biggest waves riding the peak of the storm. With the tempest passing and the swell decreasing they might have as many as six days in which to strip the wreck. And the Justine carried a fortune in gold.

     The nearest island was a bare little mound of less than ten acres. Shingle beaches rising to a flat scrubby top, with no stream or even a waterhole. But it represented salvation for the survivors of the Justine. More, it represented a golden future beyond the need for want or work.

     At low tide the precious goods locked into the strongroom were still accessible and the bullion boxes were dragged from their jumbled rest. Seventeen times on the first day, and a further fifteen on the second, a makeshift raft trailed behind the punt from wreck to island, carrying the entire contents of the strongroom plus enough provisions to found a most comfortable camp.

     They had all they wanted to eat and drink for the first time in months. Two of the younger hands did little else but eat. Their sailcloth larder contained the combined contents of the officers and captains larder as well as twenty barrels of salt pork, six bushels of peas, two each of scorched oatmeal and ships biscuit, with four hogsheads of beer, and two of rum, to wash it down. Unfortunately they'd located only fifteen barrels of water, the rest had been salted or lost.

     Over a period of days a deep hole was excavated into a drift of gibber-like rocks, to bury their gold. In a waxpaper envelope marked 'Wreck of Justine - Dec. 1861' the strongroom manifest was tarred to the topmost of the bullion boxes before the hole was filled in. Every man took four hundred guineas and one trinket whilst the second-mate retained a copy of the manifest. All they needed to do was escape, and they were rich.

     After some weeks of planning the survivors made the short crossing to the mainland and disappeared into the vastness of the northern wilderness.