ck to Ramsgate, and was making a heavy sputter
under her topsails and foresail. They raised a cheer, for they knew
our errand, and then, like the smack, in a minute she was astern and
gone. By this time the cold and the wet and the fearful plunging were
beginning to tell, and one of the men called for a nip of rum. The
quantity we generally take is half a gallon, and it is always my rule
to be sparing with that drink for the sake of the shipwrecked men we
may have to bring home, and who are pretty sure to be in greater need
of the stuff than us. I never drink myself, sir, and that's one
reason, I think, why I manage to meet the cold and wet middling well,
and rather better than some men who look stronger than me. However, I
told Charlie Verrion to measure the rum out and serve it round, and it
would have made you laugh, I do believe, sir, to have seen the care the
men took of the big bottle--Charlie cocking his finger into the
cork-hole, and Davy Berry clapping his hand over the pewter measure,
whenever a sea came, to prevent the salt water from spoiling the
liquor. Bad as our plight was, the tug's crew were no better off;
their wheel is forrard, and so you may suppose the fellow that steered
had his share of the seas; the others stood by to relieve him; and for
the matter of water, she was just like a rock, the waves striking her
bows and flying pretty nigh as high as the top of her funnel, and
blowing the whole length of her aft with a fall like the tumble of
half-a-dozen cartloads of bricks. I like to speak of what they went
through, for the way they were knocked about was something fearful, to
be sure.

[Illustration: Leaving Ramsgate Harbour in tow.]

'By half-past four o'clock in the afternoon it was drawing on dusk, and
about that hour we sighted the revolving light of the Kentish Knock
lightship, and a little after five we were pretty close to her. She is
a big red-hulled boat, with the words 'Kentish Knock' written in long
white letters on her sides, and, dark as it was, we could see her flung
up, and rushing down fit to roll her over and over; and the way she
pitched and went out of sight, and then ran up on the black heights of
water, gave me a better notion of the fearfulness of that sea than I
had got by watching the tug or noticing our own lively dancing. The
tug hailed her first, and two men looking over her side answered; but
what they said didn't reach us in the lifeboat. Then the steamer tow