lashed
ourselves, and dropped over the top into the rigging. We were all
sailors, you see, sir, and knew what the lifeboatmen wanted, and what
was to be done. Swift as thought we had bent a number of ropes' ends
together, and securing a piece of wood to this line, threw it
overboard, and let it drift to the boat. It was seized, a hawser made
fast, and we dragged the great rope on board. By means of this hawser
the lifeboatmen hauled their craft under our quarter, clear of the
raffle. But there was no such rush made for her as might be thought.
No! I owe it to my shipmates to say this. Two of them shinned out
upon the mizzenmast to the body of the second mate, that was lashed
eight or nine feet away over the side, and got him into the boat before
they entered it themselves. I heard the coxswain of the boat--Charles
Fish by name, the fittest man in the world for that berth and this
work--cry out, "Take that poor fellow in there!" and he pointed to the
body of the captain, who was lashed in the top with his arms over the
mast, and his head erect and his eyes wide open. But one of our crew
called out, "He's been dead four hours, sir," and then the rest of us
scrambled into the boat, looking away from the dreadful group of
drowned men that lay in a cluster round the prostrate mast.

'The second mate was still alive, but a maniac; it was heartbreaking to
hear his broken, feeble cries for his brother, but he lay quiet after a
bit, and died in half an hour, though we chafed his feet and poured rum
into his mouth, and did what men in our miserable plight could for a
fellow-sufferer. Nor were we out of danger yet, for the broken water
was enough to turn a man's hair grey to look at. It was a fearful sea
for us men to find ourselves in the midst of, after having looked at it
from a great height, and I felt at the beginning almost as though I
should have been safer on the wreck than in that boat. Never could I
have believed that so small a vessel could meet such a sea and live.
Yet she rose like a duck to the great roaring waves which followed her,
draining every drop of water from her bottom as she was hove up, and
falling with terrible suddenness into a hollow, only to bound like a
living thing to the summit of the next gigantic crest.

'When I looked at the lifeboat's crew and thought of our situation a
short while since, and our safety now, and how to rescue us these
great-hearted men had imperilled their own lives