f them, and then he walked and wildly ran and ran
for miles, and waved his hands to the nearest but too-distant
lightship. Sick at heart, he then fastened on the wreck a pole with a
piece of canvas lashed to it, and, as we know, he was seen by God's
mercy about that time at Deal.

As the tide again rose, evening came on, and again the captain had to
return to his lonely perch, and to lash himself again as before on the
little platform, barely three feet square, over which the sea had
beaten so fiercely a few hours before. What visions--what fancies,
what terrors may have possessed his soul as the cruel, crawling sea
again lapped against the vessel's sides in the darkness of that awful
night!

Even now a gleam of mercy shone on him, for though the cold waves again
tumbled over and around him, they did not break up the little square
platform upon which he stood, and upon the holding together of which
his chance of living through the night depended. None may tell of the
workings of that man's mind during that long night. It is said that in
moments of great peril sometimes the whole course of the past life,
past but not obliterated, is summoned up in the most vivid minuteness.
Thrice blessed is the man who in that dread moment can trust himself
wholly to Him who is 'a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from
the tempest.'

And yet, though he knew it not--though hope and faith itself may have
burned low, nay, been all but quenched in that poor wearied Norwegian
seaman's breast, though grim despair may have shouted in his ears,
'Curse God and die,' all that long night the lifeboat was close to him.
The dauntless coxswain and crew, though wearied, drenched and buffeted,
were 'determined to see the wreck before they went home.' To use their
own simple words, 'They hollered and shouted both outside and inside
them breakers, but you won't hear anything--not out there--the way the
sea was a roarin'.'

At last morning broke. When the wind is easterly you can always see
the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the
sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey
dawn stole over the horizon in the east.

The weather was clearing fast and 'fining down' when the coxswain
roused all hands to 'get up the anchor.' The foresail was set, and
then a man in the bows cried out, 'I can see something there--there's
the wreck!'--and, indeed, there it was, not more than four hundred
ya