66 SOUTHERN ESTUARIES 



the Poole lifeboat came down, and saved the men on 

 the vessel, who were in danger of death, not only from 

 the sea, but from the certainty that if left on the 

 stranded ship they would be frozen to death. Opposite 

 the wreck, but on the margin of the shore, lay the 

 backbone of an older wreck, part of a smaller vessel 

 lost many years before. It is a curious tribute to the 

 constancy of the set of the current in the gales most 

 dangerous on this coast, that had the new wreck been 

 able to drift right on shore, she would in all probability 

 have laid her timbers on the bones of her predecessor 

 in disaster. The sand-hills were quite beautiful even 

 in the frost. The heather and moss which contrives 

 to exist even on the sand were of the richest dark 

 plum- colour and green respectively. The frost had 

 nipped all the dead heather blossom off, and this lay 

 in little piles and patches, like dark seed-pearls, daintily 

 scattered on the sand. In other places the wind-blown 

 sand had been quite freshly piled, and was covered 

 with the tracks of mice, and strange to say, of rats, 

 which had been out foraging for food the night before. 

 On the other side of the sand-hills the wind was 

 blowing down the harbour, bitterly cold. Nearly all 

 the harbour was ice-bound, and the swans, to avoid 

 being nipped by the ice, had collected together in a 

 flock in one of the bays, where by constantly swim- 

 ming and keeping together, they kept a little circle of 

 still unfrozen water. All other fowl seem to have 

 forsaken the harbour for some less frozen sea. 



