the East Goodwin lightship, we have passed so close to this great buoy
that we could touch it with a boat-hook, and have heard its giant
breathing like that of some leviathan asleep on the surface of the sea,
which was dead calm at the time. I have also heard its boom at a
distance of eight miles.

I have said this great swatch leads north-east through the
Goodwins--but north-east from what, and how is the point of departure
to be found on a dark night? If you ask the coxswain of the Deal
lifeboat, who probably knows more, or at least as much about the Sands
and their secrets as any other living man, he will tell you to 'stand
on till you bring such a lightship to bear so and so, and then run due
north-east; only look out for the breakers on either side of you.' It
is one thing to go through this swatch in fair weather and broad
daylight, and another thing in the dark or even by moonlight, 'the sea
and waves roaring' their mighty accompaniment to the storm.

There are other swatches, one more to the southward than the preceding,
and also running north-east, through which the Deal men once brought a
ship named the Mandalay into safety after protracted efforts.

Another swatch too exists, opposite the East Goodwin buoy, being that
in which we struck the dangerous bottom. And yet another, just north
of the south-east buoy, leads right across the tail of the monster, and
so into the deep water of the Downs.

Looking at a chart or reading of these passages, they seem easy enough,
but to find and get through them safely when you are as low down as you
are in a boat, near the sea level, is very difficult, and as exciting
as the escape of the entangled victims from the labyrinths of
old--unmistakable danger being all around you, and impressed on both
eyes and ears.

The whole of the Goodwin Sands are covered by the sea at high water;
even the highest or north part of the Sands is then eight or ten feet
under water. At low water this north part of the Goodwins is six feet
at least above the sea level, and you can walk for miles on a rippled
surface cut into curious gulleys, the miniatures of the larger
swatches. Wild and lonely beyond words is the scene. The sands are
hard when dry--in some places as hard as the hardest beach of sand that
can be named. Near the Fork Spit the sand is marvellously hard. On
the north-west part of the Goodwins, which is that given in the
engraving, it is hard, but not so hard as else