Kingsley's splendid imagination more unfriendly to them than even 'the
black north-easter,' and their first contact with the Goodwin Sands was
a terrific crash while they were all at dinner, toasting absent friends
and each other with the kindly German _prosit_, and harmless clinking
of glasses, innocent of alcohol.

The shock against the Goodwins as the vessel slid from the crest of a
snowy roller upon the Sands, threw the cabin dinner table and
everything on it up to the cabin ceiling, and no words can describe the
wild hurry and helpless confusion on the sea-pelted motionless vessel,
as the foam and the spray beat clean over her.

Under her reefed mizzen and reefed storm foresail the lifeboat came
ramping over the four miles of tempestuous sea between the mainland and
the Goodwins, the sea getting bigger and breaking more at the top of
each wave, or 'peeling more,' as the Deal phrase goes, the farther they
went into the full fetch of the sea rolling up Channel. At last the
shallower water was reached about twenty feet in depth, where the
Goodwins commence.

Up to this point any ordinary good sea-boat of sufficient size and
power would have made as good weather of it as the lifeboat, but when
at this depth of twenty feet the great rollers from the southward began
to curl and topple and break into huge foam masses, and coming from
different directions to race with such enormous speed and power that
the pillars of foam thrown up by the collision were seen at the
distance of five miles, then no boat but a lifeboat, it should be
clearly understood, could live for five minutes, and even in a lifeboat
only the 'sons of the Vikings' dare to face it.

The wreck lay a long mile right into the very thick of this awful surf,
into which the Deal men boldly drove the lifeboat. As her great
forefoot was forced through the crest of each sea she sent showers of
spray over her mast and sails, and gleamed and glistened in the evening
sun as she struggled with the sea.

To the wrecked crew she was visible from afar, and her bright colours
and red sails told them unmistakeably she was a lifeboat. Now buried,
then borne sky-high, she appeared to them as almost an angelic being
expressly sent for their deliverance, and with joy and gratitude they
watched her conquering advance, and they knew that brave English hearts
were guiding the noble boat to their rescue.

When within about half a mile, the lifeboatmen saw the mainmast of th