complement of people on board, some
of whom were perishing with the cold of that awful night, made for the
land; still holding the cable from the ship they drifted, or rather
were hurled ashore, in the darkness, pelted by hail and snow and
drenched by the seas, which broke with force clean over them.

The task of landing the enfeebled crew and the poor lady and child in
such a great sea was dangerous, but it was accomplished safely.
Indeed, such was the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Kingsdown villagers
and fisherfolk that, if need were, they could and would have carried
the lifeboat with its human freight right up the beach.

An attempt was now made to use the rocket apparatus, and a rocket was
fired, which went clean through the fore-topsail and to the poop of the
vessel behind. Another whizzing rocket, carrying its line with it,
went hurtling through or close to the crowd clustered on the
top-gallant forecastle, where they cowered before creeping out on to
the bowsprit. No harm was done by the erratic flight of the rockets,
but the wrecked sailors naturally preferred to go ashore in the
lifeboat to being dragged through the breakers in the cradle of the
rocket-apparatus, and declining to use it, they again summoned the
lifeboat.

The first crew of the lifeboat were worn out with their exertions, and
the blows and buffetings of the freezing sea-spray. A fresh crew was
therefore obtained, all but the coxswain, Jarvist Arnold, who stuck to
his post. Back again to the ship the lifeboatmen hauled themselves,
through such a sea that words which would truly describe it must seem
exaggerated. Remember the bows of the ship lay nearly two hundred
yards from the land in a veritable cauldron of waters.

Again the lifeboat returned with her living freight of rescued seamen,
and again worn out as before with the struggle, a fresh crew was
obtained; but again Jarvist Arnold for the third time went back to the
wreck. And yet again with a fourth fresh crew the brave man returned
for the fourth and last time to the vessel; and finally came safe to
the shore with the remainder of the crew, twenty-nine of whom were thus
rescued, but only rescued by the most determined and repeated efforts,
through what the coxswain's report describes as 'a fearful sea with
snowstorm and freezing hard all the time.'

When, long after midnight, the lifeboatmen staggered home, Jarvist
found that his oilskin coat was frozen so hard that it stood