catastrophe.

"Run, lad, and fetch men, and ropes, and ladders. Alarm the whole
town, and use your legs well. Lives depend on your speed," said the
captain, in great excitement.

The lad required no second bidding. He turned and fled like a
greyhound.

The lieges of Arbroath were not slow to answer the summons. There
were neither lifeboats nor mortar-apparatus in those days, but there
were the same willing hearts and stout arms then as now, and in a
marvellously short space of time, hundreds of the able-bodied men of
the town, gentle and semple, were assembled on these wild cliffs,
with torches, rope, &c.; in short, with all the appliances for saving
life that the philanthropy of the times had invented or discovered.

But, alas! these appliances were of no avail. The vessel went to
pieces on the outer point of rocks, and part of the wreck, with the
crew clinging to it, drifted into the bay.

The horrified people on the cliffs looked down into that dreadful
abyss of churning water and foam, into which no one could descend.
Ropes were thrown again and again, but without avail. Either it was
too dark to see, or the wrecked men were paralysed. An occasional
shriek was heard above the roar of the tempest, as, one after
another, the exhausted men fell into the water, or were wrenched
from their hold of the piece of wreck.

At last one man succeeded in catching hold of a rope, and was
carefully hauled up to the top of the cliff.

It was found that this was one of the English sailors. He had taken
the precaution to tie the rope under his arms, poor fellow, having
no strength left to hold on to it; but he was so badly bruised as to
be in a dying state when laid on the grass.

"Keep back and give him air," said Captain Ogilvy, who had taken a
prominent part in the futile efforts to save the crew, and who now
kneeled at the sailor's side, and moistened his lips with a little
brandy.

The poor man gave a confused and rambling account of the
circumstances of the wreck, but it was sufficiently intelligible to
make the captain acquainted with the leading particulars.

"Were there many of your comrades aboard?" he enquired.

The dying man looked up with a vacant expression. It was evident that
he did not quite understand the question, but he began again to
mutter in a partly incoherent manner.

"They're all gone," said he, "every man of 'em but me! All tied
together in the hold. They cast us loose, though, after she st