to the lifeboat on the other side.

The men were lashed half-way up the weather rigging of the mizzenmast,
and the lifeboatmen shouted to them to come over and drop into the
lifeboat. To do this, they, half-frozen as they were, had to unlash
themselves from the weather-rigging and, in the awful cold and
darkness, climb up to the mast-head, where the lee-rigging or shrouds
met more closely the weather-rigging. Every giant sea shook the wreck;
every billow swayed her masts backwards and forwards so that they
'buckled' like fishing-rods, and the marvel is any man of the benumbed
crew succeeded in getting across from the weather side to the
lee-rigging aloft.

It must be borne in mind that the deck was under water and 'raked' by
every sea, and that the only possible way of reaching the lifeboat was
by going up the rigging from the place where the wrecked crew were
lashed, and coming down--if only they could reach across--the other
side, which was next the lifeboat, and thence jumping or being hauled
into her.

The topsails were in ribbons, and as the wrecked sailors clambered
aloft the great whips of torn canvas lashed and terrified and wounded
them. By great effort they got across the black gulf between the two
riggings--all but the captain.

There high in air--visible as the blue lights flared up from the
lifeboat, struggling hard for life, hung the captain.

One leg straddled across the chasm--one hand clutched the
weather-rigging he wanted to leave, and one hand reached out
blindly--hopefully to catch the lee shrouds--'You'll do it, captain!
Come on, captain! For God's sake, captain, come on!' And every face
in the blue glare was riveted on the struggling man but,--oh! what
anguish to the staring lifeboatmen eager to save him!--he fell, his
life-belt being torn off in his fall, full forty feet on to the
wave-washed mizzen boom.

'Out boat-hooks, brave hearts, and catch him.' But a great billow
broke over the wreck and lifeboatmen, and never was he seen again.

This time death won.

Let us trust he was ready to meet his God. 'If it be not now, yet it
will come--the readiness is all.'

Some jumping, and some dragged by the lines, the rest of the
shipwrecked men got into the lifeboat, so dazed, so benumbed that they
neither realised the loss of the captain nor their own miraculous
preservation.

Just at this moment, under press of canvas, the foam flying from her
blue bows, at full speed came the Deal