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rescuers, or the exit of the unwilling explorers from the gloomy cavern.

The poor fellows were plainly to be seen, and their cries could by heard by those who were risking their own lives in the attempt to save them. They had rigged two pieces of rope from the roof of the cave, to which they fastened a board, and when the tide began to flow, they had to sit on this board to prevent themselves being washed away. At high water the mouth of the cave was covered with the surging water, the scene being described by the eye-witnesses as terrible in the extreme.

For three days this fearful suspense continued, but on the boats going out on the fourth morning, the cave was discovered to be vacant. No doubt weakened by continuous suffering, thoroughly exhausted, and unable to hold on any longer, they must have been washed away during the night.

Words cannot pourtray, nor imagination conceive, what these poor fellows must have suffered before succumbing. Without food or water, buffetted by the waves, to see help so near and yet of no avail—it is dreadful, even at this length of time, to contemplate their terrible sufferings. The sympathies of every one in Akaroa were strained to the utmost by the fearful suspense, and never before or since has Green’s Point been watched with such intensity as for the appearance of boats with news regarding the calamity. Our informant states that he hopes never again to feel the fearful anxiety which he experienced during the time the attempts at rescue were being made.

Captain Ellis was well known throughout the district, and was universally respected. A tablet to his memory is to be seen in St. Peter’s Church, Akaroa. It was placed there by the Oddfellows, of which society he was a member. Mr. Belcher, as before stated, was a resident in Kaiapoi, where he