d
fast. The mast overhung the caldron of foam, which seemed to boil and
leap at the crew as if in disappointed fury.

By degrees the hull of the Demerara began to break up. Her timbers
writhed and snapped under the force of the ever-thundering waves as if
tormented. The deck was blown out by the confined and compressed air.
The copper began to peel off, the planks to loosen, and soon it became
evident that the mast to which the crew were lashed could not long hold
up. Thus, for ten apparently endless hours the perishing seamen hung
suspended over what seemed to be their grave. They hung thus in the
midst of pitchy darkness after their blazing tar-barrels had been
extinguished.

And what of the lifeboat-men during all this time? Were they asleep?
Nay, verily! Everywhere they stood at pierheads, almost torn from their
holdfasts by the furious gale, or they cowered under the lee of boats
and boat-houses on the beach, trying to gaze seaward through the
blinding storm, but nothing whatever could they see of the disasters on
these outlying sands.

There are, however, several sentinels which mount guard night and day
close to the Goodwin and other Sands. These are the Floating Lights
which mark the position of our extensive and dangerous shoals. Two of
these sentinels, the Tongue lightship and the Prince's lightship, in the
vicinity of the Girdler Sands, saw the signals of distress. Instantly
their guns and rockets gleamed and thundered intelligence to the shore.
Such signals had been watched for keenly that night by the brave men of
the Margate lifeboat, who instantly went off to the rescue. But there
are conditions against which human courage and power and will are
equally unavailing. In the teeth of such a gale from the
west-nor'-west, with the sea driving in thunder straight on the beach,
it was impossible for the Margate boat to put out. A telegram was
therefore despatched to Ramsgate. Here, too, as at Broadstairs, and
everywhere else, the heroes of the coast were on the lookout, knowing
well the duties that might be required of them at any moment.

The stout little Aid was lying at the pier with her steam "up." The
Ramsgate lifeboat was floating quietly in the harbour, and her sturdy
lion-like coxswain, Isaac Jarman, was at the pier-head with some of his
men, watching. The Ramsgate men had already been out on service at the
sands that day, and their appetite for saving life had been whetted.
They wer