t immediate help was needed, it appeared that the coxswain of
the lifeboat proposed signalling a passing tug-boat, and wanted my
sanction for the measure. Had she responded to the signal, she would
have towed the lifeboat to the rescue of the mysterious man on the
Goodwins in an hour or so. As Hon. Secretary of the Lifeboat Branch, I
at once authorised the step, and a flag was dipped from Deal pierhead,
and blue lights were burned; but all in vain. The tug-boat went on her
way, taking no notice of the signals, which it is supposed she did not
understand.

It was plain some disaster had taken place, but what had happened on
those gruesome sands I could only conjecture until I reached the
Boatmen's Rooms. Outside the building I found in groups and knots a
crowd of boatmen and pilots, and also Richard Roberts, the coxswain of
the Deal lifeboat.

Roberts had that evening, about five p.m., been taking a look at the
Goodwins with his glass, a good old-fashioned 'spy-glass.' After a
long steady search--'Why,' said he to the men round him, 'there's a new
wreck on the sands since yesterday!' The gale of the morning part of
the day had been accompanied by low sweeping clouds of mist and driving
fog, and as soon as the curtain of thick vapour lifted, Roberts noticed
the new wreck.

The other boatmen then took a look, and they all went up to the high
window of the lifeboat-house to gain a better view of the distant
Goodwins.

The point where the wreck, or the object they saw lay, was the outer
part of the Goodwin Sands towards the north, and was quite eight miles
distant from the keen-eyed watchers at Deal.

'That's a wreck since yesterday,' said one and all.

Roberts, gazing through his glass, now cried out, 'There's something,
man or monkey, getting off the vessel and moving about on the sand!'

'Let's have a look, Dick,' said another and another, and then all cried
out,

'Yes; it's a man! He's waving something--it's a flag!'

'No, 'tis n't a flag,' said Roberts, 'it's more like a piece of canvas
lashed to a pole; it blows out too heavy for a flag.'

Just about the same time, watchers at Lloyd's office had seen through a
powerful glass the same object on the Goodwins, and they sent word to
the coxswain of the lifeboat that there was a man in distress on the
Goodwin Sands, and wildly running to and fro.

The wind, however, being north-east, and the tide having just commenced
to run in the same direction as the