drowning on it.

'It was half an hour after this that a man, who was jammed close
against me, pointed out into the darkness and cried in a wild hoarse
voice, "Isn't that a steamer's light?" I looked, but what with grief
and suffering and cold, I was nearly blinded, and could see nothing.
But presently another man called out that he could see a light, and
this was echoed by yet another; so I told them to keep their eyes upon
it and watch if it moved. They said by and by that it was stationary;
and though we could not guess that it meant anything good for us, yet
this light heaving in sight and our talking of it gave us some comfort.
When the dawn broke we saw the smoke of a steamer, and agreed that it
was her light we had seen; but I made nothing of that smoke, and was
looking heartbrokenly at the mizzenmast and the cluster of drowned men
washing about it, when a loud cry made me turn my head, and then I saw
a lifeboat under a reefed foresail heading direct for us. It was a
sight, sir, to make one crazy with joy, and it put the strength of ten
men into every one of us. A man named Gillmore--I think it was
Gillmore--stood up and waved a long strip of canvas. But I believe
they had seen there were living men aboard us before that signal was
made.

'The boat had to cross the broken water to fetch us, and in my agony of
mind I cried out, "She'll never face it! She'll leave us when she sees
that water!" for the sea was frightful all to windward of the Sand and
over it, a tremendous play of broken waters, raging one with another,
and making the whole surface resemble a boiling cauldron. Yet they
never swerved a hair's-breadth. Oh, sir, she was a noble boat! We
could see her crew--twelve of them--sitting at the thwarts, all looking
our way, motionless as carved figures, and there was not a stir among
them as, in an instant, the boat leapt from the crest of a towering sea
right into the monstrous broken tumble.

'The peril of these men, who were risking their lives for ours, made us
forget our own situation. Over and over again the boat was buried, but
as regularly did she emerge with her crew fixedly looking our way, and
their oilskins and the light-coloured side of the boat sparkling in the
sunshine, while the coxswain, leaning forward from the helm, watched
our ship with a face of iron.

'By this time we knew that this boat was here to save us, and that she
_would_ save us, and, with wildly beating hearts, we un