ntrast with the failure of other boats, launched successfully.

In receiving the report of the coxswain next day, I asked him what time
precisely he launched. Now that evening, about 9 p.m., I was sitting
in my own house listening to the long-protracted roar of the wind, and
just when I thought the strong walls could bear no more, there came a
blinding flash of lightning which paled the lamps, almost
simultaneously with a peal of thunder that made the foundations of the
house tremble. When I asked the coxswain next day what time exactly he
launched, his reply was, 'Just in that clap of thunder.'

This may help my readers to depict the scene in its appalling grandeur,
and to realise the meaning of the words, 'A vessel in distress,' and
the launch of the lifeboat on its sacred errand.

The flares which had been burning now suddenly stopped. This, however,
was owing to the distressed vessel having exhausted her stock of
rockets and torches.

Passing under the stern of a schooner which they hailed, the gallant
lifeboat crew were pointed out the vessel that had been burning them,
riding with a red light in her rigging to attract notice. Making for
her, they anchored as usual ahead, and veered down eighty fathoms. In
the gale and heavy sea they found the anchor would not hold, and they
had to bend on another cable, and pay out a hundred fathoms, and at
last they got alongside.

The captain cried out, 'Come on board and save the vessel! My crew are
all gone!' And indeed she was in a sore plight.

That evening after dark, about 6 p.m., this brig, the Edina, had been
riding out the gale in the Downs. In a furious blast a heavy sea broke
her adrift from her anchor, and she came into helpless collision with a
ship right astern of her. Grinding fiercely into this other very large
vessel, the Edina tore herself free with loss of bowsprit and jib-boom,
all her fore-rigging being in dire ruin and confusion.

In the collision, six of the crew of the Edina jumped from her rigging
to the other ship with which they were in collision, leaving only three
men, the captain, mate, and boy, on board the Edina. By great efforts
they, however, were able to let go another anchor, but that did not
bite, and the Edina kept dragging with the wreckage and wild tangle of
bowsprit and jib-boom hanging over her bows and beating against her
side.

One of the six men who had jumped from the Edina in the panic of the
collision had, alas!