and able to render good service.
While Stanley loaded a small carronade, young Welton got up blue lights
and an empty tar-barrel. These were quickly fired. The South sandhead
vessels immediately replied, the Gull, as we have seen, was not slow to
answer, and thus the alarm was transmitted to the shore while the
breakers that rushed over the Goodwins like great walls of snow, lifted
the huge vessel like a cork and sent it crashing down, again and again,
upon the fatal sands.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

GETTING READY FOR ACTION.

Let us turn back a little at this point, and see how the watchers on
Ramsgate pier behaved themselves on that night of storm and turmoil. At
the end of the east pier of Ramsgate harbour there stands a very small
house, a sort of big sentry-box in fact, of solid stone, which is part
and parcel of the pier itself--built not only _on_ it but _into_ it, and
partially sheltered from the full fury of wind and sea by the low
parapet-wall of the pier. This is the east pier watch-house; the marine
residence, if we may so express it, of the coxswain of the lifeboat and
his men. It is their place of shelter and their watch-tower; their
nightly resort, where they smoke the pipe of peace and good fellowship,
and spin yarns, or take such repose as the nature of their calling will
admit of. This little stone house had need be strong, like its inmates,
for, like them, it is frequently called upon to brave the utmost fury of
the elements--receiving the blast fresh and unbroken from the North Sea,
as well as the towering billows from the same.

This nocturnal watch-tower for muscular men and stout hearts, small
though it be, is divided into two parts, the outer portion being the
sleeping-place of the lifeboat men. It is a curious little box, full of
oilskin coats and sou'wester caps and sea-boots, and bears the general
aspect of a house which had been originally intended for pigmies, but
had got inhabited by giants, somehow, by mistake. Its very diminutive
stove stands near to its extremely small door, which is in close
proximity to its unusually little window. A little library with a
scanty supply of books hangs near the stove-pipe, as if the owners
thereof thought the contents had become somewhat stale, and required
warming up to make them more palatable. A locker runs along two sides
of the apartment, on the coverings of which stand several lanterns, an
oil-can, and a stone jar, besides sundry article