ring
away the shingle which successive tides had gathered in front of her
bows.

Mingling among the workers are the wives and mothers, putting a piece
of bread and cheese in Tom's pocket or helping on 'father' with his
oilskin jacket or his sou'wester. And now 'All hands in the lifeboat!'
and twenty minutes after the bell is rung she rushes down the steep and
plunges into the surf. The loving, lingering watchers on the beach
just see her foresail hoisted, and she vanishes into the night, as the
green rocket shoots one hundred yards into the sky to tell the
distressed sailors 'The lifeboat is launched and on her way.'

The vessel's flare had now burned out, and the guns and rockets from
the lightships had ceased, and in front of the lifeboat was only the
chill night, 'black as a wolf's throat.' As they worked away from the
shore there came in, borne landwards and towards them by the gale, the
dull deep roar of the surf on the Goodwins.

It is marvellous how far the sound of the sea on the Goodwins travels.
Previously, on a fine calm day, with light breeze, I was standing
across the Goodwins, bound to the East Goodwin lightship, and we could
hear the roar of the ripple on the Goodwins--not breakers, but
ripple--at a distance of two miles. We were sucked into that
ugly-looking ripple by an irresistible current, and after an anxious
half-hour we got through safely.

In front of the lifeboat on this night was no mere ripple, but
breakers; and the deep hollow roar foretold a tremendous sea.

As the dawn came faintly, the breakers were seen by the oncoming
lifeboat; she was already stripped for the fight, and her canvas was
shortened to reefed mizzen and reefed storm-foresail. Even then she
was pressed down by the blast and leaned over as the spray flew
mast-high over her. There was a mile of this surf to go through, and
with her red sails flat as a board the lifeboat plunged into it.

She thrashed her way nobly through, now up and down on short
wicked-looking chopping seas, now on some giant wave hoisted up to the
sky; and still up as if she was about to take flight into the air--as
we once before experienced in a gale on the Brake Sand--then buried and
smothered; and then over the next wave like a seabird. On to the
rescue flew the lifeboat, steered by the coxswain himself, beating to
windward splendidly, as if conscious of and proud of the sacred task
before her. On triumphantly through and over the breakers,