to the crew; but her
sloping decks were washed and beaten by the waves that broke over her
and it was all but impossible to walk on them.

The lifeboat's anchor was dropped, and again they veered down, but this
time it was possible to get to windward, and by reason of the wreckage
it was impossible to get to leeward. There was an English pilot on
board, who helped to carry out the directions given from the lifeboat,
and lines were quickly passed from the wreck.

It was seen the captain's wife was on board, for the grey morning was
breaking, and as the lifeboat rose on the crest of a wave, after the
crew and just before the captain, who came last, the poor lady was
passed into the lifeboat.

She only came with great reluctance and after much persuasion, as the
deck of the lifeboat was covered with three inches of water and she
seemed to be sinking. When the Swedish captain came on board, while
the spray was flying sky-high over them, could he truly be said to be
taken 'on board'?

'Here's a pretty thing to come in--full of water!' said the captain.

'Well,' replied Roberts, 'we've been in it all night, and you won't
have to wait long.'

The lifeboatmen then got up anchor, and with twelve Swedes, five
Frenchmen, and their own crew of fifteen made for home. Deep plunged
the lifeboat, and wearily she rose at each sea, but still she struggled
towards Deal, as the wounded stag comes home to die. Her fore and
after air-boxes were full of water, for a man could creep into the rent
in her bows, and she had lost much of her buoyancy. Still she had a
splendid reserve in hand, from the air-boxes ranged along and under her
deck, and thus fighting her way with her freight of thirty-two souls,
at last she grounded on the sands off Deal, and the lifeboatmen leaped
out and carried the rescued foreigners literally into England from the
sea, where they were received as formerly another ship-wrecked stranger
in another island 'with no little kindness.'

The next day the storm was over; sea and sky were bathed in sunshine,
and the swift-winged breezes just rippled the surface of the deep into
the countless dimples of blue and gold.

[Greek] _Pontion te kumaton_
_Anerithmon gelasma_

was the exact description, more easily felt than translated; but close
to the North Bar buoy, in deep water, and just outside the Brake Sand,
there projected from out of the smiling sea the grim stern spectacle of
the masts of a barque