e of common elements, shall we despair that
transformations yet more glorious may be wrought in human souls now
thwarted and blackened by the malice of the devil, when they are
subjected to the far diviner and far more stupendous alchemy of the
Holy Spirit of God?'

The moral to be drawn from these pages surely must be this--that there
is splendid material to work upon, the most undaunted heroism and the
noblest self-sacrifice, among the seafaring classes of our island.

On this dark, tempestuous night, be the cause what it may, preventible
or otherwise, the Ganges drifted helplessly to her fate. A powerful
tug-boat got hold of her, but the ship dragged the tug-boat astern with
her, towards the Goodwins, until at last the tug-boat snapped her great
15-inch hawser, and then gave up the attempt and returned to land.

The Ganges now burned flares and blue lights for help. Noting her
rapid approach to the Goodwins, on which an awful sea was running, and
the helpless and dishevelled condition of the vessel, the Gull
lightship fired guns and rockets at intervals of five minutes.

This is the proper and recognised summons to the lifeboats, but long
before the lightship fired her signal, the Deal boatmen saw the peril
of the vessel; and one of their number, Tom Adams, ran to the coxswain
of the Deal lifeboat with the news: 'Tug's parted her, and she'll be on
the Goodwins in five minutes!' 'Then we'll go,' said the coxswain, and
he rang the bell and summoned a crew.

As it was one of the wildest nights on which the Deal lifeboat was ever
launched, the very best men on Deal beach came forward to the struggle
for a place in the lifeboat, and out of their number a crew of fifteen
was got.

R. Roberts, at this time the second coxswain, was afloat in his lugger,
putting an anchor and chain on board the Eurydice, and in his absence
Tom Adams helped the coxswain to steer the lifeboat, which literally
flew before the blast, to the rescue.

The squalls of this tempest were regular 'smokers,' a word which
signifies that the crests of the waves were blown into the astonished
air in smoking clouds of spray; and the lifeboat was stripped for the
fight, reefed mizzen and double-reefed storm foresail. I should say
that running out before the wind the mizzen was not set, and they
frequently had to haul down the reefed foresail, and let her run under
bare poles right away from the land into the hurricane.

No one can appraise the na