"I am just as sure of it as I am that I am standing here."
"What was she like?"
"She seemed a large ship with only two masts standing, and high up on the Sands."
"Well, if you saw her once, and are certain of it, once is as good as fifty times. Away then for the life-boat."
Hurrying up the pier to give the alarm, they shout to some boatmen who are at work helping to stow cargo on board a Dutch steamer—the Orient: "A vessel on the Goodwin; Life-boat! Life-boat!" Immediately the men throw down whatever they have in their hands, spring to the gunwale, and are out of the ship, up the steps, on the pier, and running for the life-boat in a moment; and this to the intense astonishment of the Dutch mate, who had not heard the cry of life-boat. He runs along the deck on to the poop, and shakes his fist at the men, shouting after them, "You be bad men you! You be bad men! What for you run away? You come here work no more!"
The honest-hearted fellow was, however, more than appeased, when he was told that it was to rush on board the life-boat; to go out in that wild dark storm and terrible sea to the rescue of life, that the men had so suddenly deserted their work and fled from the vessel.
One of the pier men runs to the harbour-master, and reports that a large ship has been seen ashore on the Goodwin; the harbour-master hurries to the pier-head, but the lift in the storm has settled down thicker than ever; he can see nothing; he, and all with him, listen attentively for any report of a gun from the Goodwin light-vessels, but can hear nothing; they cross-question the man who saw the wreck. The harbour-master thinks he may have been mistaken—that it was probably a ship sailing through the Gull Channel that he saw. No! the man is positive that it was a ship on the Goodwin, and nothing else; and so the harbour-master, although they can hear no signal from the light-vessels, decides upon sending the life-boat, and orders the coxswain to proceed to sea.
Rapid preparation for the start has been going on all this time; and very speedily steamer and life-boat are away in the dark storm speeding their way to the Goodwin Sands. They get to the North Sand light-ship about eleven o'clock, and find a very heavy sea running in the neighbourhood of the Sands, with frequent snow-squalls sweeping along.
The men on board the light-vessel say that both they, and the men on board the Gull light-ship, have been making signals since daylight. (The roar of the storm, and the wind not being on shore, the guns were not heard, and the weather was too thick for any signals to be seen). They report that they had seen a ship on shore on the South-East Spit of the Sands.