shrieking of the blast, and yet they were not far from
the perishing! The crew of the Demerara were clinging to their
quivering mast close by, but what could their weak voices avail in such
a storm? Their signal fires had long before been drowned out, and those
who would have saved them could not see more than a few yards around.

Presently the booming of distant cannon was heard and then a faint line
of fire was seen in the far distance against the black sky. The
Prince's and the Girdler lightships were both firing guns and rockets to
tell that shipwreck was taking place near to them. What was to be done?
Were the Shingles to be forsaken, when possibly human beings were
perishing there? There was no help for it. The steamer and lifeboat
made for the vessels that were signalling, and as the exhausted crew on
the quivering mast of the Demerara saw their lights depart, the last
hope died out of their breasts.

"Hope thou in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him," perchance occurred to
some of them: who knows?

Meanwhile the rescuers made for the Prince's lightship and were told
that a vessel in distress was signalling on the higher part of the
Girdler Sands.

Away they went again, and this time were successful. They made for the
Girdler lightship, and on the Girdler Sands they found the Fusilier.

The steamer towed the lifeboat to windward of the wreck into such a
position that when cast adrift she could bear down on her. Then the
cable was slipped and the boat went in for her own special and hazardous
work. Up went her little foresail close-reefed, and she rushed into a
sea of tumultuous broken water that would have swamped any other kind of
boat in the world.

What a burst of thrilling joy and hope there was among the emigrants in
the Fusilier when the little craft was at last descried! It was about
one o'clock in the morning by that time, and the sky had cleared a very
little, so that a faint gleam of moonlight enabled them to see the boat
of mercy plunging towards them through a very chaos of surging seas and
whirling foam. To the rescuers the wreck was rendered clearly visible
by the lurid light of her burning tar-barrels as she lay on the sands,
writhing and trembling like a living thing in agony. The waves burst
over her continually, and, mingling in spray with the black smoke of her
fires, swept furiously away to leeward.

At first each wave had lifted the ship and let her crash down on the
sands,