s on the sharp edge and broke at once into
two pieces. The after part was washed clean away with about twenty
passengers clinging to it, the captain and his wife being among them. A
group of people, about nine in number, were huddled together near the
bow; they, with the whole fore part of the ship, were lifted right on to
the rock. In the fore cabin was a poor woman, Mrs. Dawson, with a child
on each arm. When the vessel was stranded on the rock the waves rushed
into the exposed cabin, but she managed to keep her position, cowering
in a corner. First one and then the other child died from cold and
exhaustion, and falling from the fainting mother were swept from her
sight by the waves, but the poor soul herself survived all the horrors
of the night.

[Illustration: GRACE DARLING.]

It was now four o'clock; the storm was raging with unabated violence,
and it was still two hours to daybreak. About a mile from Longstone, the
island on which the vessel struck, lies Brownsman, the outermost of the
Farne Islands, on which stands the lighthouse. At this time the keeper
of the lighthouse was a man of the name of William Darling. He was an
elderly, almost an old man, and the only other inmates of the
lighthouse were his wife and daughter Grace, a girl of twenty-two. On
this Friday night she was awake, and through the raging of the storm
heard shrieks more persistent and despairing than those of the wildest
sea-birds. In great trouble she rose and awakened her father. The cries
continued, but in the darkness they could do nothing. Even after day
broke it was difficult to make out distant objects, for a mist was still
hanging over the sea. At length, with a glass they could discern the
wreck on Longstone, and figures moving about on it. Between the two
islands lay a mile of yeasty sea, and the tide was running hard between
them. The only boat on the lighthouse was a clumsily built jolly-boat,
heavy enough to tax the strength of two strong men in ordinary weather,
and here there was but an old man and a young girl to face a raging sea
and a tide running dead against them. Darling hesitated to undertake
anything so dangerous, but his daughter would hear of no delay. On the
other side of that rough mile of sea men were perishing, and she _could_
not stay where she was and see them die.

So off they set in the heavy coble, the old man with one oar, the girl
with the other, rowing with straining breath and beating hearts. Any
moment