rseless washing, her funnel was brown
with rust, and the tough craft looked a hundred years old. Remembering
what these vessels had gone through, how they had but two days since
topped a long series of merciful and dangerous errands by as brilliant
an act of heroism and humanity as any on record, it was difficult to
behold them without a quickened pulse. I recalled the coming ashore of
their crews, the lifeboatmen with their great cork-jackets around them,
the steamer's men in streaming oilskins, the faces of many of them
livid with the cold, their eyes dim with the bitter vigil they had kept
and the furious blowing of the spray; and I remembered the bright smile
that here and there lighted up the weary faces, as first one and then
another caught sight of a wife or a sister in the crowd waiting to
greet and accompany the brave hearts to the warmth of their humble
homes. I felt that while these crews' sufferings and the courage and
resolution they had shown remained unwritten, only half of the very
stirring and manful story had been recorded. The narrative, as related
to me by the coxswain of the lifeboat, is a necessary pendant to the
tale told by the mate of the wrecked ship; and as he and his
colleagues, both of the lifeboat and the steam-tug, want no better
introduction than their own deeds to the sympathy and attention of the
public, let Charles Edward Fish begin his yarn without further preface.

No. 2.--_The Coxswain's Account_.

'News had been brought to Ramsgate, as you know, sir, that a large ship
was ashore on the Long Sand, and Captain Braine, the harbour-master,
immediately ordered the tug and lifeboat to proceed to her assistance.
It was blowing a heavy gale of wind, though it came much harder some
hours afterwards; and the moment we were clear of the piers we felt the
sea. Our boat is considered a very fine one. I know there is no
better on the coasts, and there are only two in Great Britain bigger.
She was presented to the Lifeboat Institution by Bradford, and is
called after that town. But it is ridiculous to talk of bigness when
it means only forty-two feet long, and when a sea is raging round you
heavy enough to swamp a line-of-battle ship. I had my eye on the
tug--named the Vulcan, sir--when she met the first of the seas, and she
was thrown up like a ball, and you could see her starboard paddle
revolving in the air high enough out for a coach to pass under; and
when she struck the hollow