330 A FEARFUL SCENE. [CHAP. vn. 



three were wafted nearer and nearer the shore ; and so sorely 

 did they struggle, that, even against every probability, hope 

 whispered that their safety was possible. Tor full twenty 

 minutes they floated about in this situation, latterly coming 

 within about twenty yards of where the people were standing 

 so near that, had the sea been ordinarily calm, hundreds 

 were there who would have considered it no difficult task to 

 rush into the water and give them their hand. One man 

 cried to his brother to put his hair away from his eyes, when, 

 by the motion the latter made, it was evident he heard quite 

 distinctly. Two or three different times he obeyed, putting 

 up his hand, and rubbing his hair over his forehead. An 

 anxious wife actually rushed into the tide nearly to the neck, 

 in an endeavour to rescue her husband, but her heroic 

 effort was completely unavailing. The tide was ebbing at the 

 time, but the waves, in terrible force, rushed far up on the 

 beach, and swept back again with fearful power. ISTo one 

 could keep his footing in the water. Attempts were made 

 to join hands and thus extend help to the unfortunate men, 

 but, besides the weight of the water itself, the backwash of 

 the waves hurled the gravel beach from below their feet, so 

 that to stand on it was impossible ; and even while these 

 vain efforts were being made at rescue, the men, worn out in 

 the raging surf, sank, one after another, amid the cries and 

 shrieks of their despairing relatives. 



The number of men drowned on the north-east coast i.e. 

 at Wick, Helmsdale, and Peterhead during the great storm 

 of 1848, was one hundred, and the value of the boats and the 

 nets that were lost upon that remarkable occasion was at least 

 7000. The gale broke upon the coast on the 19th of August, 

 just as the fishing was being busily prosecuted. Most of the 

 boats ran for shelter to the nearest haven, and it is melancholy 

 to know that many of them foundered at the very entrance to 

 their harbour. The whole of the mischief was done in the 



