crest down the dark deep blue slope to its
windless trough, or more safely than the Deal boatmen in their luggers.

Richard Roberts had been all that day afloat in the Downs in his
powerful 'cat,' the Early Morn. It was this boat, some of my readers
may remember, which picked up, struggling in the water, twenty-four of
the passengers of the Strathclyde, when she was run down off Dover by
the Franconia, some years ago. But the gale increasing towards
evening, Roberts, who had got to leeward too much, could not beat home,
and he had to run away before the wind and round the North Foreland to
Margate. Thence he took train, and leaving his lugger in safety,
reached Deal about nine p.m., just as the flash from the Gull
lightship, and then the distant boom of a gun and again another flash,
proclaimed there was a ship ashore on the sands. And through the wild
rain gusts he saw the flare of a vessel in distress on the Brake
Sand--God have mercy on them! for well he knew the hard and rocky
nature of that deadly spot.

Then rang out wildly above the storm-shriek the summons from the iron
throat of the lifeboat bell, 'Man the lifeboat! Man the lifeboat!'
The night was dark, the ponderous surf thundered on the shingle, and
there could be seen the long advancing lines of billows breaking into
white masses of foam; and outside that there was only the blackness of
sea and sky, and the tossing lights and flares and signals calling for
help. 'No lanterns could be kept lit that night, sir! Blowed out they
was, and we had to feel our way in the lifeboat.'

And you might hear in the bustle and din of quick preparation the
boatmen's shouts, 'Ease her down, Bill! just to land her bow over the
full!' 'Man that haul-off warp! she'll never get off against them seas
unless you man that haul-off warp! Slack it off!' And the coxswain
shouts, 'All hands aboard the lifeboat! Cut the lanyard!'

Then the trigger flies loose and the stern chain which holds the
lifeboat in her position on the beach smokes through the 'ruffles,' or
hole in the iron keel through which it runs, as the mighty lifeboat
gains speed in her rush down the steep declivity of the beach. As she
nears the sea, faster still she slides and shoots over the well-greased
skids, urged forwards by her own weight and pulled forwards by the
crew, who grasp the haul-off warp moored off shore a long way, and at
last, as a warrior to battle, with a final bound she meets the shock