whether they belong to the North or the South,
they deserve the encouragement of praise. A man likes to feel, when he
has done his best, that his fellow-men think well of his work. If I
had not been one of that crew I should wish to say more; but no false
pride shall make me say less, sir, and I thank God for the resolution
He put into us, and for the strength He gave us to keep that resolution.

'All that we had to do now was to make ourselves as comfortable as we
could. Our tow-rope veered us out a long way, too far astern of the
tug for her to help us as a breakwater, and the manner in which we were
flung towards the sky with half our keel out of water and then dropped
into a hollow--like falling from the top of a house, sir,--while the
heads of the seas blew into and tumbled over us all the time, made us
all reckon that, so far from getting any rest, most of our time would
be spent in preventing ourselves from being washed overboard. We
turned to and got the foresail aft, and made a kind of roof of it.
This was no easy job, for the wind was so furious that wrestling even
with that bit of a sail was like fighting with a steam-engine. When it
was up ten of us snugged ourselves away under it, and two men stood on
the after-grating thwart keeping a look-out, with the life-lines around
them. As you know, sir, we carry a binnacle, and the lamp in it was
alight and gave out just enough haze for us to see each other in. We
all lay in a lump together for warmth, and a fine show we made, I dare
say; for a cork jacket, even when a man stands upright, isn't
calculated to improve his figure, and as we all of us had cork jackets
on and oil-skins, and many of us sea boots, you may guess what a raffle
of legs and arms we showed, and what a rum heap of odds and ends we
looked, as we sprawled in the bottom of the boat upon one another.
Sometimes it would be Johnny Goldsmith--for we had three
Goldsmiths--Steve and Dick and Johnny--growling underneath that
somebody was lying on his leg; and then maybe Harry Meader would bawl
out that there was a man sitting on his head; and once Tom Friend swore
his arm was broke: but my opinion is, sir, that it was too cold to feel
inconveniences of this kind, and I believe that some among us would not
have known if their arms and legs really had been broke, until they
tried to use 'em, for the cold seemed to take away all feeling out of
the blood.

'As the seas flew over the boat the water fi