axe
is just used in time to cut the line as it smokes over the gunwale
before the coil tears his leg off; in another's case the awful pull of
the rope fractured the arm lengthways and not by a cross fracture, and
the bone never united after the most painful operations.

Owners and captains and officers of steamships, for God's sake, ease
down your speed when your poor sailor brethren, the gallant Deal
boatmen who man the lifeboats, are struggling to hook your mighty
steamships! Ease down a bit, gentlemen, and let the men earn something
for the wives and children at home without having to pay for their
efforts with their precious lives!

The very same men who work the galley punts I have just described are
the 'hovellers' in the great luggers when the tempest drives the
smaller boats ashore, and they also are the same men who, in times of
greater and extremer need, answer so nobly to the summons of the
lifeboat bell.

Pritchard's most interesting chapter, in which the best authorities are
quoted at length, is convincing that the word 'hoveller' is derived
from _hobelier_ (_hobbe_, [Greek] _hippos_, Gaelic _coppal_) and
signifies 'a coast watchman,' or 'look-out man,' who, by horse
(_hobbe_) or afoot, ran from beacon to beacon with the alarm of the
enemies' approach, when, 'with a loose rein and bloody spur rode inland
many a post.' Certainly nothing better describes the Deal boatmen's
occupation for long hours of day and night than the expression so well
known in Deal, 'on the look-out,' and which thus appears to be
equivalent to 'hovelling.'

In 1864 the first lifeboat of the locality was placed in Walmer by the
Royal National Lifeboat Institution. In 1865 another lifeboat was
placed in North Deal, a cotton ship with all hands having been lost on
the southern part of the Goodwins in a gale from the N.N.E., which
unfortunately the Walmer lifeboat, being too far to leeward, was unable
to fetch in that wind with a lee tide.

This splendid lifeboat was called the Van Cook, after its donor, and
was very soon afterwards summoned to the rescue for the first time.

It was blowing 'great guns and marline-spikes' from the S.S.W. with
tremendous sea on Feb. 7, 1865, when there was seen in the rifts of the
storm a full-rigged ship on the Goodwin Sands. The lifeboat bell was
rung, a crew was obtained, and the men in their new and untried
lifeboat made her first, but not their first, daring attempt at rescue.
A few momen