der; their trumpet
the roaring storm. They began to train for this warfare when they were
not so tall as their fathers' boots, and there are no awkward squads
among them now. Their organisation is rough-and-ready, like themselves,
and simple too. The heavens call them to action; the coxswain grasps
the helm, the oars are manned, the word is given, and the rest is
straightforward fighting--over everything, through everything, in the
teeth of everything, until the victory is gained, and rescued men,
women, and children are landed in safety on the shore.

Of course they do not always succeed, but they seldom or never fail to
do the very uttermost that it is in the power of strong and daring men
to accomplish. Frequently they can tell of defeat and victory on the
same battlefield.

So it was on one fearful winter night at the mouth of the Tyne in the
year 1867. The gale that night was furious. It suddenly chopped round
to the South South East, and, as if the change had recruited its
energies, it blew a perfect hurricane between midnight and two in the
morning, accompanied by blinding showers of sleet and hail, which seemed
to cut like a knife. The sea was rising mountains high.

About midnight, when the storm was gathering force and the sentinels
were scarcely able to keep a lookout, a preventive officer saw a vessel
driving ashore to the south of the South Pier. Instantly he burnt a
blue light, at which signal three guns were fired from the Spanish
Battery to call out the Life Brigade. The men were on the alert. About
twenty members of the brigade assembled almost immediately on the pier,
where they found that the preventive officer and pier-policeman had
already got out the life-saving apparatus; but the gale was so fierce
that they had been forced to crawl on their hands and knees to do so. A
few minutes more and the number of brigade men increased to between
fifty and sixty. Soon they saw, through the hurtling storm, that
several vessels were driving on shore. Before long, four ships, with
their sails blown to ribbons, were grinding themselves to powder, and
crashing against each other and the pier-sides in a most fearful manner.
They were the Mary Mac, the Cora, and the Maghee, belonging to
Whitstable, and the Lucern of Blyth.

Several lifeboats were stationed at that point. They were all launched,
manned, and promptly pulled into the Narrows, but the force of the
hurricane and seas were such that the