long the footway in foaming streams. As the evening comes, knots
of men stroll toward the pier. They are all clothed in thick guernseys
and business-like helmets, and on their breasts they have the letters
V.L.B. They are the Volunteer Life Brigade. The brigade is very mixed in
composition. There are carpenters, bankers, pilots, clerks, lawyers,
tradesmen of all grades, and working men of all trades. At the middle of
the pier stands a strong wooden house, in which there is one great room
where the watchmen sit, and also numerous small boxes with berths where
rescued men are laid. Hot-water bottles are constantly ready, and a
mysterious array of restoratives rest handy on a side-table.

Since the great piers were run out to sea the water in the Tyne has been
much deepened; but this advantage has its drawback in the fact that the
sea pours through the deepened channel like the swirl of a millrace. As
soon as the tiers of shipping begin to creak and moan with the lurching
swell the people know that there may be bad work. The brigadesmen sit
chatting in their warm shed. They know that they must go to work in the
morning; they know that they may be drenched and aching in every limb
before the dawn whitens: yet they take everything as it comes with
cheerful stoicism. During the winter of 1880 scores of men travelled to
business at Newcastle for a week at a stretch without having lain once
in bed. They went out when their services were required; stood to their
ropes, and were hustled about by the sea: they brought crew after crew
ashore, and in the mornings they fared without grumbling to office or
warehouse or shop. Snatches of sleep on the hard benches made their only
rest, yet they stood it out.

The stormy nights are passed much in the same way. The men who are not
looking out sit smoking and gossiping; the foam piles itself softly to
the weather side of the house, and the spray falls with a keen lashing
sound on the stones outside. Towards the end of the pier there is
nothing to be seen but a vague trouble, as though a battle were going on
in the dark, and to the north the Tynemouth light throws a long shaft of
brightness through the mist. Presently a light is seen away southward or
out to the east, and all the men are on the alert directly. If a ship
from the south can only weather the end of the pier and escape the wash
from the north, she soon gets into the fairway, but it is not easily
done in stormy weather. The ligh