en thought, alas! was only the play of some holiday-keepers on an
excursion to the Goodwins. They went to the Goodwins in a light
south-west breeze and smooth sea. While there the wind shifted to
north-east and a tumble of a sea got up, and it is supposed that it
then beat into and filled their laden boat, despite the efforts which
they are believed to have made to float her or get her ride to her
anchor and come head to wind. If this be so, how long and desperate
must their struggle have been to save their boat from wreckage, and to
pump out the water and heave out the coal. Their anchor and cable,
found on the sands and let go to full scope, favours this idea.

On the other hand, the fact that they were seen wildly running to and
fro looks as if some sudden catastrophe had occurred, as if they had
struck on some stump in the water close to the very edge of the
Goodwins.

The very day on which the photographs were taken which have been used
to illustrate this chapter, we were shoving off the steep northern face
of the Goodwin Sands, when we saw, not ten yards from the precipitous
edge of the dull red sands, in about twenty-five feet of water, and
just awash or level with the surface, the bristling spars and masts of
a three-masted schooner, the Crocodile, which had been lost there
January 6, 1891, in a fearful snowstorm, from the north-east, of that
long winter. Had we even touched those deadly points, we too should
have probably lost our boat and been entrapped on the Goodwin Sands.
The coxswain of the Deal lifeboat was with us, and told how that at
three o'clock on that terrible January morning, or rather night,
wearied with previous efforts, he had launched the lifeboat and beat in
the face of the storm and intense cold ten miles to windward, toward
the burning flares which told of a vessel on the Sands.

Just when within reach of the vessel, this very wreck, they saw the
Ramsgate tug and lifeboat were just before them, and taking the crew
out of the rigging of the wreck. In sight of the whole company, for
their lanterns and lights were burning, the poor exhausted captain of
the schooner, in trying to get down from the rigging, in which he was
almost frozen to death, fell into the stormy sea and was lost in the
darkness, while the remainder were gallantly rescued by the Ramsgate
lifeboat.

[Illustration: A wreck on the Goodwins.]

It was on the dangerous stumps and masts of this vessel, to save the
crew