ance either side, but would have been helplessly
beaten back again.

The Kingsdown men were keenly watching the approaching catastrophe as
the Glendura came landwards. Long before she struck, the little
fishing village echoed to the cry of 'Man the lifeboat,' and clad in
their sou'-westers and lifebelts the brave crew waited for the crash of
the doomed vessel, which, by God's mercy, took place right in front of
them. The sea they had to face was terrific, and so bitter was the
night that the sea spray froze as it was borne landwards by the blast,
and each rope in the ship's rigging was thick with ice.

Just as the men were all in the lifeboat, and were about to man their
haul-off warp to pull the lifeboat out into deep water thereby, a
service of the greatest danger on such a night, some one on the
beach--it was James Laming, the present able Kingsdown coxswain, but
then a very young man--even in that black night discovered a great
fender floating in the recoil. It was pulled ashore, and it was then
found that a line was attached to it, and to that line a weightier one;
and to that a four and a half-inch hawser, or strong cable, leading
from the wrecked ship to the land.

Perceiving the object of those on board, Jarvist Arnold gave the order
to 'Let the lifeboat go,' and she plunged down the steep beach into the
black billows of that easterly snowstorm and right into the very teeth
of it. No sooner had they touched the water than they hauled upon the
cable which had been sent ashore from the vessel; and so, bit by bit,
one moment submerged and the next swung on the crest of some stormy
wave, they gradually hauled themselves out to the vessel, and found the
crew with the captain and his wife and child gathered in a forlorn
little cluster out on the jib-boom.

Right under the martingale with its sharp spear-like head the lifeboat
had to lie. When a monstrous sea came roaring round the stern of the
vessel, the lifeboat had to let go and come astern, lest she should be
impaled on the sharp point, as she was hoisted up with great force.

Back again the crew hauled her, and when the furious sea had passed, in
answer to shouts of 'Come on!' 'Now's your time!' down a rope into the
lifeboat came the second mate with the captain's child in his arms. Up
the stiff half-frozen rope again he climbed and brought down the
captain's wife; and some more of the crew rapidly came the same way.
Then the lifeboat having their full