e
progress of that line, for on the success of that bold swimmer the lives
of all might depend. If he failed, who could hope to succeed? At
length they felt it tightened, and they knew that it was being hauled up
by many strong hands on shore. Now a stout rope was fastened to the
line, and that being hauled on shore was secured, and a cradle was
placed on it. No time was to be lost. The large ship was striking with
terrible violence on the rocks, it appearing that every instant would be
her last. One after the other, the people on board hastened into the
cradle--as many as dared to make the hazardous passage. Ten, fifteen,
twenty landed--the twenty-fifth person had just reached the shore, when,
with a horrible crash, the ship parted, breaking into fragments, and 454
persons were hurried in a moment into eternity. Even Rogers, brave
swimmer as he was, could not have survived had he attempted to swim
among those wreck-covered waves. For his heroic courage the National
Lifeboat Institution awarded the gold medal to Rogers and a gratuity of
5 pounds.

REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF ENDURANCE OF A CREW OF BRITISH SEAMEN.

A small fishing smack, with a crew of five people, was wrecked off
Bacton, near Great Yarmouth, on the 27th of November 1859. The poor men
were in the rigging, without food or drink, for 60 hours before they
were rescued from the mast of their sunken vessel, to which they had
been clinging for more than 60 hours. For three nights and two days
they held on to this uncertain support, about 8 feet above the raging
sea, without food, and almost without clothing. One of the men took off
his shirt and held it out as a signal of distress, till it was blown
from his feeble grasp. The vessel struck upon the Harborough Sand on
Friday evening at nine o'clock, and they were not rescued till ten
o'clock on Monday morning--a case of most remarkable endurance. The
vessel was but a small one, a smack with four hands. The fourth hand, a
boy, climbed the mast with the others, and held on till the Saturday,
when he became exhausted, and, relaxing his hold, slipped down into the
sea. One of the men went down after him, seized him, and dragged him up
the mast again; but there was nothing to which to lash him, and no
crosstrees or spars on which to rest; so that during the night, when
almost senseless with cold and fatigue, the poor boy slipped down again,
and was lost in the darkness. On Sunday they were tantalised wi