running landwards, and the 'send'
of each great rolling wave, just on the point of breaking, would shoot
the lifeboat forwards till her stem and iron forefoot would strike the
transom and stern of the wreck with tremendous force. The strain and
spring of the cable would then draw back the lifeboat two or three
boats' lengths, and then another breaker, its white wrath visible in
the pitchy darkness, would again drive the lifeboat forwards and
upwards as with a giant's hand, and then crash! down and right on to
the stern and even right up on the deck of the half-submerged vessel.
Sometimes even half the length of the lifeboat was driven over the
transom and on the sloping deck of the wreck, off which she grated back
into the sea to leewards.

What pen can describe the turmoil, the danger, and the appalling
grandeur of the scene, now black as Erebus, and again illumined by a
blaze of lightning? And what pen can do justice to the stubborn
courage that persevered in the work of rescue in spite of the
difficulties which at each step sprang up?

It was now found that the crew in distress were French. In their
paralysed and perished condition they could not make out what our men
wanted them to do, and they did not make fast the lines thrown them.
Nor had they any lines to throw, as their tackle and running gear were
washed away, nor could they understand the hails of the lifeboatmen.
Hence the task of saving them rested with the Deal men alone.

The Frenchmen, when they saw the lifeboat rising up and plunging
literally upon their decks with terrific force, held back and
hesitated, clinging to the weather rail, where their position was most
perilous. A really solid sea would have swept all away, and every two
or three minutes a furious breaker flew over them. Something had to be
done to get them, and to get them the men in the lifeboat were
determined.

Now the fore air-box of the lifeboat has a round roof like a tortoise's
back, and there is a very imperfect hand-hold on it.

Indeed, to venture out on this air-box in ordinary weather is by no
means prudent, but on this night, when it was literally raked by
weighty seas sufficient in strength to tear a limpet from its grip, the
peril of doing so was extreme, but still, out on that fore air-box,
determined to do or die, crept Richard Roberts, at that time the second
coxswain of the lifeboat, leading the forlorn hope of rescue, and not
counting his life dear to him. Up