Everyone lends a hand, and in a marvellously short time the lifeboat is gliding down the slips into the sea, her crew aboard. The boat takes the water like a duck, her sail is hoisted, and she beats off-shore in a sea in which no other vessel could live. Again and again a wave breaks over her and fills her full of blue water, but up she springs, and empties herself like a sea-bird shaking the spray from her back. When a sea breaks aboard, the crew grip the nearest thwart and hang on; they are soaked from head to heel in an instant, despite their oilskins. But they care nothing for that; their eyes are fixed ahead, eagerly looking out for the wreck. What or where it is they do not know yet. All they know is that the lightship which guards a dangerous sandbank some miles off-shore is making signals, and they know that a vessel is in distress.
The lifeboat thrashes through the furious seas, and soon they see the lightship—a stout vessel securely anchored in position near the sandbank. It is her duty at night to keep a great lamp burning to warn seamen not to approach her perilous neighbourhood. Soon the lifeboat is sweeping past the anchored lightship, and her men hail the lightship with a tremendous shout of "Where away?"
"South end o' the bank!" roar the lightshipmen in reply; and the lifeboat darts on like a living creature, for the gale favours her on that tack.
The short winter day is now closing in, and the keen eyes on board the lifeboat are straining eagerly into the dusk, when a sudden shout goes up from every throat: "There she is! there she is!"
A tremendous blaze of light has broken out a mile ahead of them. The doomed vessel is burning a "flare," perhaps of cloth soaked in oil, anything to make a bright light and show her position. Suddenly the flare goes out. It sinks as swiftly as it had risen, and a groan of anxiety bursts from the lips of the lifeboat heroes. Has she gone down, carrying to the bottom the poor fellows who had raised the flare a short time back? They do not know, and on they rush to see.
Soon they gain the tail of the dreaded sandbank, which has seen the destruction of many and many a good ship, and here they find the wreck. The back of the ship is broken, her main and mizen masts are gone, and only the foremast stands; and in the foretop a dozen poor fellows are lashed in the rigging, with icy seas sweeping over them at every moment.
The coxswain of the lifeboat burns a hand signal, and it throws a bright light across the roaring sea, and in a pause of the howling wind the crew hear faint cheers from the shipwrecked seamen, and shout a cheery reply: "Hold on, boys! we've come for you, and we won't go back without you."
But how to get them? that is the question. The lifeboat has ridden through terrible seas on her journey, but they are nothing, nothing to the seas which are breaking round the lost vessel; for the latter has been driven out of deep water on to the bank, and on the bank is no steady run of water, but a thousand furious cross-currents, whirling this way and that way in terrific fury; and when current meets current up goes a great column of foam as high as a ship's mainmast, and setting up a roar heard above the wild hurly-burly of storm and sea.
On board the lifeboat a quick, short council is held.
"Wait till morning," says one; "we'll lie off all night."