night on the southern shores of England, and strewed her rocks and sands
with wrecks and dead bodies. Nothing new in this, alas! as all know who
dwell upon our shores, or who take an interest in, and read the records
of, our royal and noble Lifeboat Institution. But with this great
subject we have not to do just now, further than to observe, as we have
said before, that in those days there were no lifeboats on the coast.

Under the shelter of an old house on the shore at Penzance were gathered
together a huge concourse of townspeople and seafaring men watching the
storm. It was a grand and awful sight--one fitted to irresistibly
solemnise the mind, and incline it, unless the heart be utterly
hardened, to think of the great Creator and of the unseen world, which
seems at such a season to be brought impressively near.

The night was extremely dark, and the lightning, by contrast, peculiarly
vivid. Each flash appeared to fill the world for a moment with lambent
fire, leaving the painful impression on observers of having been struck
with total blindness for a few seconds after, and each thunderclap came
like the bursting of artillery, with scarcely an interval between the
flash and crash, while the wind blew with almost tropical fury.

The terrible turmoil and noise were enhanced tenfold by the raging surf,
which flew up over the roadway, and sent the spray high above and beyond
the tops of the houses nearest to the shore.

The old house creaked and groaned in the blast as if it would come down,
and the men taking shelter there looked out to sea in silence. The
bronzed veterans there knew full well that at that hour many a
despairing cry was being uttered, many a hand was stretched wildly,
helplessly, and hopelessly from the midst of the boiling surf, and many
a soul was passing into eternity. They would have been ready then, as
well as now, to have risked life and limb to save fellow-creatures from
the sea, but ordinary boats they knew could not live in such a storm.

Among the watchers there stood Jim Cuttance. He had been drinking at a
public-house in Penzance, and was at the time, to use his own
expression, "three sheets in the wind"--that is, about half-drunk. What
his business was nobody knew, and we shall not inquire, but he was the
first to express his belief that the turret and bridge of the Wherry
Mine would give way. As he spoke a vivid flash of lightning revealed
the stout timbers of the mine stand