Happily a powerful Deal lugger is near the scene of the disaster; her crew at once do their best to pick up and return to the life-boat those of the men who are themselves unable to gain it.
The life-boat, self-righted, is floating high on the waves quite ready for action as soon as her crew can again take charge of her, and speed her on in her course.
The men are, at last, all once more on board, the boat is again got under weigh, and speeds safely to the land.
But how, all this while, fared the unfortunate crew of the vessel, in the vain effort to render assistance to whom the life-boat men had incurred such hardship and peril.
The unfortunate ship was the brig Linda: the captain fancied the ship was in a safe course, free from any immediate danger; the storm fog was too thick for them to see the land, or any of the numerous signal lights that guard the coast, but they kept the lead going, and sped on before the gale; suddenly all hands are alike startled and terrified by the loud report of a gun fired quite close to them, and at seeing the light of a light-vessel very near; they at once realize their danger, for they know that the dread Goodwin Sands must be right under their lee; with frantic haste they attempt to wear the ship, but it is too late; as she feels the helm she plunges in among the surf, crashes upon the Sands, and the great seas begin to fly over her; the ship must be lost, it is beyond all hope that she can be saved; is there any hope for the crew? They will not despair, or be lost without making what small efforts they are able to obtain assistance; they know, from the violence with which the ship rises and thumps upon the Sands, that she must very speedily go to pieces. They get a tar-barrel, fill it with canvas, grease, and rags, light it, and have the satisfaction of seeing it flare up with a brilliant flame; that, at all events, must sufficiently penetrate the surrounding darkness and gloom to make known their distress to the neighbouring light-vessel.
Again, and almost immediately, they hear the loud boom of the gun; but as previously it seemed to them the signal of death, so now it affords them a faint—a very faint hope; rockets too are fired by the light-vessel; surely the signals will be heard and seen on shore, and the life-boat will come out in search of them; but where will they be then? There is no time—no time; the seas are washing over the deck, the fierce fire of the tar-barrel is at once extinguished, and the men hasten to take refuge from the sweeping seas in the cross-trees and shrouds of the masts. Seven men spring to the foremast shrouds, and climb to the cross-trees, the captain and four men cling to the mainmast; time after time the vessel lifts and falls with a crash that wrenches her from stem to stern, and makes all her timbers groan and rend, and nearly shakes the sailors from their hold. Now the ship begins to work and writhe, the timbers break with loud reports, planks are wrenched from her side in the fierce tear of the sea, stout iron bolts are torn from their hold and twisted like so much thread—the ship is breaking up fast; the masts sway about, the men have to hold on their hardest to prevent being shaken into the sea, so are they tossed and swung about in the roll of the mast and the sway of the vessel. Each wave leaping higher than those that have gone before, seems to claim them for its prey; everything on the deck is swept away; the deck itself opens, the water gets down into the hold, and soon the deck breaks up, and pieces float away in the wash of the sea; the bulwarks are torn off, and now a piece of the side of the vessel is wrenched away; the vessel must be torn to fragments in a few short minutes, and death seems very near to all the crew.
A tremendous wave rushes over the wreck, a crash louder than a thunder peal; the foremast has broken off close to the deck, it falls over; a few loud despairing cries, and the seven poor fellows who clung to the mast are hurled into the sea, and are at once lost in the wild rage of water.
The five men on the mainmast shudder in their terror and despair, and cling closer and closer to the mast as it sways and jerks from side to side; there may be a few minutes yet to live; they think of home and wife and children, and hold on the more convulsively while the seas break over them with increasing violence; it takes but a short time, and the wreck beneath them seems in absolute fragments; the poop-deck is wrenched up, and a large piece of it is torn away; at the next sea the wreck heels over, the mainmast is carried away, and the captain and the four men are hurled from it into the sea; the captain is thrown against a large fragment of deck with such force that both his legs are broken; he, however, manages to hold on to the piece of wreck, the other four men are also swept to it, and there cling; they find themselves surrounded by the hundred fragments of wreck into which the stout brig has been so rapidly torn.
The tide sweeps away the piece of deck to which the five men are so desperately clinging—away from the scene of the sad, swift, tragedy, and, by God's mercy, into an eddy of the current away from the surf and breakers which are thundering down in all their fury upon the Sands, and which would have swept the poor sailors at once to destruction if their frail raft had come within their reach. Away in the rough but not now broken seas the men are borne, their only hope the shattered, heaving piece of wreck that forms their raft; the horrors of the dark night are added to by the roar of the breakers as they crash down upon the Sands, and the poor sailors know not but that at any moment they may be met by some fresh eddy of the swift tide, and swept into the midst of that fatal surf. The fierce gale howls over them, the men are exhausted and hopeless, but they manage to lash the captain to the piece of wreck, his two broken legs make him faint and sick with agony; and on and on they float during the long dreary hours of the night.
They pass the Gull light-ship, watch its bright and, to them, mocking light, then they are carried to the north-east of the Sands; there they meet the changing tide, and it sets them to the southward, and, to their great joy, away from the fatal Goodwin, away in the direction of Calais, the seas still wash over them. The agony of the captain is almost unendurable, as every wash of the sea, every heave of the frail piece of wreck jars his broken legs; the men have their nails torn from their fingers with the desperate energy with which they clutch the smooth timbers of the piece of deck on which they are lying. Hour after hour passes, and for fifteen hours they thus float about, cold and wet, and wounded, and faint with hunger and thirst; the poor fellows become almost unconscious, and can only just manage to hold on mechanically to their frail support; the morning passes, and they have no energy to look for a passing sail, and no means of signalling if they saw one.