, I was unmanned; I
could not thank them, I could not trust myself to speak. They told us
they had left Ramsgate Harbour early on the preceding afternoon, and
had fetched the Knock at dusk, and not seeing our wreck had lain to in
that raging sea, suffering almost as severely as ourselves, all through
the piercing tempestuous night. What do you think of such a service,
sir? How can such devoted heroism be written of, so that every man who
can read shall know how great and beautiful it is? Our own sufferings
came to us as a part of our calling as seamen. But theirs was bravely
courted and endured for the sake of their fellow-creatures. Believe
me, sir, it was a splendid piece of service; nothing grander in its way
was ever done before, even by Englishmen. I am a plain seaman, and can
say no more about it all than this. But when I think of what must have
come to us eleven men before another hour had passed, if the lifeboat
crew had not run down to us, I feel like a little child, sir, and my
heart grows too full for my eyes.'

Two days had elapsed (continues the writer in the _Daily Telegraph_)
since the rescue of the survivors of the crew of the Indian Chief, and
I was gazing with much interest at the victorious lifeboat as she lay
motionless upon the water of the harbour. It was a very calm day, the
sea stretching from the pier-sides as smooth as a piece of green silk,
and growing vague in the wintry haze of the horizon, while the white
cliffs were brilliant with the silver sunshine. It filled the mind
with strange and moving thoughts to look at that sleeping lifeboat,
with her image as sharp as a coloured photograph shining in the clear
water under her, and then reflect upon the furious conflict she had
been concerned in only two nights before, the freight of half-drowned
men that had loaded her, the dead body on her thwart, the bitter cold
of the howling gale, the deadly peril that had attended every heave of
the huge black seas. Within a few hundred yards of her lay the tug,
the sturdy steamer that had towed her to the Long Sand, that had held
her astern all night, and brought her back safe on the following
afternoon. The tug had suffered much from the frightful tossing she
had received, and her injuries had not yet been dealt with; she had
lost her sponsons, her starboard side-house was gone, the port side of
her bridge had been started and the iron railing warped, her decks
still seemed dank from the remo