l lifeboatmen, I lay this tribute of hope and regard on
the grave of brave George Marsh.

[Illustration: Deal boatmen on the lookout for a hovel.]

CHAPTER VII

THE GOLDEN ISLAND

Nor toil nor hazard nor distress appear
To sink the seamen with unmanly fear;
Though their firm hearts no pageant-honour boast,
They scorn the wretch that trembles in his post.

The smart and trim three-masted schooner, the Golden Island, was bound
from Antwerp to Liverpool, with a cargo of glass-sand, and was running
before a favouring gale to the southward. At midnight, on May 14,
1887, or the early morning of May 15, with a heavy sea rolling from the
N.E., suddenly, no notice being given and no alarm felt, she struck
with tremendous force the outer edge of the Goodwin Sands.

The timbers of the Golden Island opened with the crash, and she filled,
and never lifted or thumped, but lay swept by each billow, like a rock
at half-tide, immovable by reason of her heavy cargo. Her crew
consisted of seven all told, including a lad, the captain's son, and
they managed to light a large flare, which was seen a long way, and was
visible even in Deal, eight miles distant.

With what sinking of heart, as the waters raged round and over them,
they watched the flame of their torch burning lower and lower. How
intense the darkness when it was extinguished! How terrible the
thunderous roar of the breakers!

The nearest lightship was about four miles from them, and her look-out
man noticed the flare and fired the signal guns of distress, and sent
up the usual rockets.

At 2 a.m. the coastguard on Deal beach called the coxswain of the
lifeboat, R. Roberts. Hastily dressing himself he went up the beach,
and seeing the flash of the distant guns, he rang the lifeboat bell.
Men sprang out of their warm beds, and, half-dressed, rushed to the
lifeboat. Their wives or mothers or daughters followed with the
remainder of their clothes, their sea boots, or jackets or mufflers.
Then came the struggle to gain a place in the lifeboat, and then the
bustle and hurry of preparation to get her ready for the launch.

Deal beach at such a time is full of boatmen, some in the lifeboat
loosing sails and setting the mizzen, some easing her down to the top
of the slope, some seeing to the haul-off warp, a matter of life or
death in such a heavy sea dead on shore; others laying down the
well-greased 'skids' for the lifeboat to run on, and others clea