emptied herself free and lived through it all, by God's
good providence.

'Must I see my sons die in my sight, and my friends and neighbours
too?' thought Jarvist Arnold, as he was beaten away from the vessel;
and then, 'Lord, help me!' Again and again, in vain they struggled,
when some one on the wreck sprang from the bridge at the most imminent
peril of his life, on to the slippery, sloping wave-swept deck.

He had seen coiled on a belaying pin on the bridge a long lead line,
and on the deck still unwashed away an old cork fender. Some say it
was the mate of the vessel; others that it was one of the Kingsdown men
who fastened the lead line to the fender and who slung it overboard,
and then, stumbling and slipping, ran for his life back to the bridge,
barely escaping an overwhelming wave.

Swirling and eddying in the strange currents on the Goodwins, and
beaten of the winds and waves, on came the old cork fender towards the
lifeboat. They had not another bit of cable to spare on board the
lifeboat; every inch of their one hundred and sixty fathoms was paid
out. Breathless the coxswain, and the man in the bows, rigid as his
own boat-hook with the anxiety of the moment, lashed to his position, a
life line round his waist, watched the approach of the fender. It was
sucked by the current towards the lifeboat, and then tossed by a wave
away from her again.

Feeling assured that a great loss of life must soon occur, either by
the people on the frail refuge of the steamer's bridge being swept off
it, or by the bridge itself being carried away by the seas, which were
becoming more solid every moment, Jarvist and his comrades thought the
cork fender was a long time in reaching them. Lives of men hung in the
balance, and minutes seem hours then.

At last it drifted hopelessly out of reach, but into a curious
backwater, which eddied it right under the boat hook of the bowman. In
an instant it was seized, and the line made fast to a thwart. 'I've a
great mind to trust to it,' said Jarvist Arnold, but caution prevailed,
and they made fast a stout rope to the lead line.

Again the people on the bridge watched their chance. One man managed
to wade along the now submerged deck to reach the lead line, and he
hauled it with the stronger rope on board, making the latter securely
fast. Again had this man to fly for life up the bridge from an
advancing billow, which, leaping over the stern of the wreck, nearly
overtook hi