pot where the wreck had been seen, but it was absolutely dark.
They could see nothing, no flare, no light, and they could hear nothing
but the hollow thunder of breaking surf.

Roberts now decided to run the lifeboat right through the breakers
which beat on the outer part of the sands, and thoroughly to search
that part of the Goodwins.

Some said, 'The Ramsgate lifeboat has been here and taken the man off.'

Others, 'If there are people alive on the wreck, why is there no light
or flare?'

And then they ran her, in that pitchy blackness, into the surf; she
went through it close hauled, and beyond it into the deep sea the other
side, and searched the outside edge of the sands, but to no purpose.
Then, having shouted all together and listened, they stood back again
through the surf, running now before the wind.

The broken and formidable sea raged round the lifeboat like a pack of
wolves. It broke on both sides of the lifeboat right into her, and
literally boiled over her as she flew before the gale and the impulse
of the swell astern. Nothing could be seen in this stormy flight
except the white burst of the tumultuous waves, and all around was
midnight blackness.

Some were of opinion, after the prolonged search, that the wreck had
disappeared; but Roberts carried all hearts with him when he said,
'We're not going home till we see and search that wreck from stem to
stern!'

Then they anchored in Trinity Bay in four fathoms of water. They each
had a piece of bread, a bit of cheese, and a smoke; and with every
faculty of sight and hearing strained to the utmost, they longed for
the coming of the day.

We may now return to the wrecked vessel, and describe the fate of her
captain and crew. She was a Norwegian brig, the Auguste Hermann
Francke, bound from Krageroe to sunny San Sebastian with a cargo of
ice. She had a crew of seven all told, and the captain's name was
Jargersen.

He had been running his vessel that morning before the gale, and at
eight o'clock in the forenoon struck on the Goodwins, having either
failed in the thick weather to pick up the lightships or the Foreland
as points from which to take a safe departure, or being carried out of
his course altogether by the strong tides which run around and over the
Goodwins, and which, if not allowed for, are a frequent cause of
disaster. It was on the shallower northern part of the Goodwins that
the Norwegian brig struck in a north-easterly gale.