at till she is thrown high up the beach, broadside on,
for at the last minute the helm must be put up or down, to get the boat
to lie along the shore, but only at the very last minute--otherwise
danger for the crew! I have known a boat landing, to capsize and catch
the men underneath, and I have been myself tolerably near the same
danger.

Three or four men man these galley punts, and the hardships and perils
they encounter in the earning of their livelihood are great. The men
are sometimes, even in winter time, three days away in these open
boats, sleeping on the bare boards or ballast bags and wrapped in a
sail.

They cruise to the west to put one of their number on board some
homeward-bound vessel as 'North Sea pilot,' or they cruise to the north
and up the Thames as far as Gravesend, a distance of eighty miles, to
get hold of some outward-bound vessel with a pilot on board, which
pilot is willing to pay the boatmen a sovereign for putting him ashore
from the Downs, and they are towed behind the vessel, probably a fast
steamer, for eighty miles to Deal and the Downs. I have done this--and
it is a curious experience--in summer, but to be towed in the teeth of
a north-easterly snowstorm from Gravesend to the Downs is quite another
thing; but it is the common experience of the Deal boatmen. And every
day in winter they hover off Deal in their splendid galley punts,
rightly called 'knock-toes,' for the poor fellows' hands and feet are
often semi-frozen, to take a pilot out of some outward-bound steamer
going at the rate of ten or fifteen knots an hour. It means at the
outside about 5_s_. per man; perhaps they have earned nothing for a
week, and hungry but dauntless they are determined to get hold of that
steamer, if men can do it. On the steamer comes full speed right end
on at them. The Deal men shoot at her under press of canvas, haul down
sail, and lay their boat in the same direction as the flying steamship,
which often never slackens her speed the least bit. As all this _must_
be done in an instant, or pale death stares them in the face, it is
done with wonderful speed and skill. While a man with a boat-hook, to
which a long 'towing-line' is attached, stands in the bow of the galley
punt and hooks it into anything he can catch, perhaps the bight of a
rope hung over the steamer's side, the steersman has for his own and
his comrades' lives to steer his best and to keep his boat clear of the
steamer's sides,