250 THE SEA. 



for the men cannot use their sou'westers for the purpose when both hands are so busily 

 employed in freeing- their oars from the seas and keeping the blades from being- blown up 

 into the air by the force of the gale. Most happily, the bowl is a wooden one, and it tioats 

 a few yards from them. The men watch it anxiously as they are tossed up and down 

 by the quick waves. Back the boat down upon the bowl they cannot, and it is drifting 

 away faster than they are floating. It would seem a simple matter to pick up a bowl 

 floating within a distance so small, but the waves long render it impossible. Suddenly the 

 coxswain cries, ' ' Here is a lull ; round with her sharp ! " The men on the starboard side 

 give a mighty pull, and the others back their hardest ; then a pull altogether ; the bowl 

 is within reach ; the coxswain grasps it with a hasty snatch. " Round ! round with her 

 quick ! " and the boat is got head straight to the seas again before the waves can catch her 

 broadside and roll her over. All breathe again : they have another chance of life. 



They get clear of the Sands, but a fierce gale is still raging. " As they get into the 

 Gull stream, they see vessel after vessel running with close-reefed topsails before the 

 gale ; the boatmen hail them, but they get no answer. One little sloop affords them 

 slight hope, for she is evidently altering her course, but after a moment's apparent hesitation, 

 away she goes again before the gale, and abandons them to their fate. The captain of the 

 little vessel related afterwards how, in the height of the storm, he saw some poor fellows 

 in a small boat, and had a great wish to try and save them, but the sea was running so 

 high that he felt it was impossible to heave his vessel to, and so had to leave them, and 

 that they must have been driven on the Sands and lost. This sloop was about a quarter of 

 a mile from the boat, and the men do not again get as near to any other ship ; and as vessel 

 after vessel passes, and the night begins to grow dark, the position of the men becomes more 

 and more hopeless, and they all feel that if no vessel picks them up they must soon be 

 blown in again upon the sands, and there perish/' The men work on, but solemnly, 

 very solemnly. 



But one vessel, a large American ship, remains at anchor in the Downs ; vessel after vessel 

 had slipped their cables and run before the gale. It is their last hope. " As they drop slowly 

 towards her, they shout time after time, but cannot make themselves heard, and it is getting 

 too dusk for them to be seen at any distance ; the seas are running alongside the ship almost 

 gunwale high, and it is impossible to get nearer to her than within fifty yards. Hail 

 after hail the men give ; still they get no answer. They can see a man on the poop, but he 

 evidently neither sees nor hears them, and their last chance seems slipping away, for they 

 are fast drifting past the vessel. 'Get on the thwart, Dick, and shout with all your 

 might V the coxswain says to the man pulling stroke oar. ' I'll hold you ! ' hauling in his oar 

 and catching it under the seat. The man springs upon the thwart, and balancing himself 

 for a second, hails with all his force." 



" The man is moving ; he hears us, hurrah ! " is the glad cry in the boat ; and they 

 can soon see several astonished faces peering over them. The boat drifts by the ship; 

 they give a pull or two, to get her under the stern of the vessel; a coil of rope with a 

 life-buoy is thrown to them, and they manage to get it on board. The captain is now on 

 deck; he orders other ropes to be sent down, and soon another life-buoy, with cord attached, 

 comes floating by. Still the boat is in great danger ; their safety hitherto has been in floating 



