o something. And then they shouted, and minutes went
by, hours as it seemed to them. At last one of the men--but not
Marsh--slowly raised his head and seemed to move about in a dazed
condition.

'Where's Marsh?' cried the lifeboatmen.

'Can't find him!' he replied.

'Is he drowned?'

'Is he washed away?'

And the reply was, 'I can't find him.'

And then this man was pulled into the water, and was the last man
saved--and that with great difficulty, for the line fouled and
jammed--from the wreck of the Fredrik Carl, which had proved a
death-trap to poor Marsh, and so nearly to the seven others who were
saved.

Still the lifeboat waited in the gathering darkness, and hailed the
wreck, hoping against hope to see Marsh appear; but he was never seen
again alive. Short as was the distance between the lifeboat and the
wreck, it was impossible to swim to her, lying broadside as she was to
the swell. Anyone attempting it would either have been dashed to
pieces against her, or lifted bodily over her, brained very possibly,
and certainly washed away to leeward, return from which would have
been, even for an uninjured man, impossible.

And still the lifeboatmen waited and called; but there was no answer.
Poor Marsh had been suddenly summoned to meet his God. The oldest man
of the number, and for some years a staunch total abstainer, he had
manfully stuck to his post, he had sent the others before himself, and
had shown throughout a fine spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of the best
traditions of the Deal boatmen.

Slowly and sadly the lifeboat got her anchor up, and never perhaps did
the celebrated Deal lifeboat return with a more mournful crew; for they
had seen, in spite of their best efforts, one of their comrades perish
before their eyes.

The next day it blew a gale of wind from the north-east, and it was not
till several days afterwards that Marsh's body was recovered, entangled
in the wreckage, to leeward of the vessel, and sorely mangled. Wrapped
in a sail, and with the rope still round him which ought to have drawn
him into safety, lay the poor 'body of humiliation' in which had once
dwelt a gallant spirit; but a good hope burned within me as the
triumphant lines rang in my ears--

Deathless principle, arise!
Soar, thou native of the skies.
Pearl of price, by Jesus bought,
To His glorious likeness wrought!

In telling the story of this gallant struggle to save their comrades,
made by the Dea