TOben tbe Iftortb Sea Kageg 17 



row-boats were suspended that day. It is only in the 

 severest weather that they cease running. Even 

 could they have been kept going there would have 

 been no passengers to ferry over. 



On the Town Wall, which skirts the narrow channel 

 leading from the bay to the harbour, a small group of 

 men stood leaning against the wind and gazing fixedly 

 in the direction of West Hartlepool sands. What they 

 saw through such a smother of spindrift I was at a 

 loss to imagine. Suddenly, however, there was a slight 

 clearance that way. The dim outline of a ship on the 

 beach slowly revealed itself ; then the spray-mist 

 closed in again. . . . 



So the destruction by land and sea went on, and at 

 the roughest spot of all there rose, calm and serene, 

 as though disdainful of Nature's fiercest assaults, the 

 white, tapering tower of the lighthouse : 



And as the evening darkens, lo ! how bright, 

 Through the deep twilight of the purple air, 



Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light 

 With strange, unearthly splendour in its glare ! 



rv 



A tug heaved slowly into the little harbour at day- 

 break on the following morning. The skipper told me 

 that for twenty-six hours he had fought with the 

 hurricane in the bay, almost within hailing distance 

 of land. During the whole of that anxious time he 

 was unable to see more than a few yards away, and 

 could only keep steaming in the teeth of the wind and 

 sea. His vessel moved in a circle, he believed. All 

 around was the white, ghostly spindrift, and so 

 precarious was their situation that not a single man 



