But “darling Willie” does think of it, and asserts that being wrecked is the very thing he wants, and that he’s willing to take his chance of being drowned! And Willie goes on thinking of it, year after year, until he gains his point, and becomes the family’s “sailor boy,” and mayhap, for the first time in her life, Willie’s mother casts more than a passing glance at newspaper records of lifeboat work. But she does no more. She has not yet been awakened. “The people of the coast naturally look after the things of the coast,” has been her sentiment on the subject—if she has had any definite sentiments about it at all.
On returning from his first voyage Willie’s ship is wrecked. On a horrible night, in the howling tempest, with his flaxen curls tossed about, his hands convulsively clutching the shrouds of the topmast, and the hissing billows leaping up as if they wished to lick him off his refuge on the cross-trees, Willie awakens to the dread reality about which he had dreamed when reading Cook and Crusoe. Next morning a lady with livid face, and eyes glaring at a newspaper, gasps, “Willie’s ship—is—wrecked! five lost—thirteen saved by the lifeboat.” One faint gleam of hope! “Willie may be among the thirteen!” Minutes, that seem hours, of agony ensue; then a telegram arrives, “Saved, Mother—thank God,—by the lifeboat.”
“Ay, thank God,” echoes Willie’s mother, with the profoundest emotion and sincerity she ever felt; but think you, reader, that she did no more? Did she pass languidly over the records of lifeboat work after that day? Did she leave the management and support of lifeboats to the people of the coast? I trow not. But what difference had the saving of Willie made in the lifeboat cause? Was hers the only Willie in the wide World? Are we to act on so selfish a principle, as that we shall decline to take an interest in an admittedly grand and good and national cause, until our eyes are forcibly opened by “our Willie” being in danger? Of course I address myself to people who have really kind and sympathetic hearts, but who, from one cause or another, have not yet had this subject earnestly submitted to their consideration. To those who have no heart to consider the woes and necessities of suffering humanity, I have nothing whatever to say,—except,—God help them!
Let me enforce this plea—that inland cities and towns and villages should support the Lifeboat Institution—with another imaginary case.
A tremendous gale is blowing from the south-east, sleet driving like needles—enough, almost, to put your eyes out. A “good ship,” under close-reefed topsails, is bearing up for port after a prosperous voyage, but the air is so thick with drift that they cannot make out the guiding lights. She strikes and sticks fast on outlying sands, where the sea is roaring and leaping like a thousand fiends in the wintry blast. There are passengers on board from the Antipodes, with boxes and bags of gold-dust, the result of years of toil at the diggings. They do not realise the full significance of the catastrophe. No wonder—they are landsmen! The tide chances to be low at the time; as it rises, they awake to the dread reality. Billows burst over them like miniature Niagaras. The good ship which has for many weeks breasted the waves so gallantly, and seemed so solid and so strong, is treated like a cork, and becomes apparently an egg-shell!
Night comes—darkness increasing the awful aspect of the situation tenfold. What are boxes and bags of gold-dust now—now that wild despair has seized them all, excepting those who, through God’s grace, have learned to “fear no evil?”
Suddenly, through darkness, spray, and hurly-burly thick, a ghostly boat is seen! The lifeboat! Well do the seamen know its form! A cheer arouses sinking hearts, and hope once more revives. The work of rescuing is vigorously, violently, almost fiercely begun. The merest child might see that the motto of the lifeboat-men is “Victory or death.” But it cannot be done as quickly as they desire; the rolling of the wreck, the mad plunging and sheering of the boat, prevent that.
A sturdy middle-aged man named Brown—a common name, frequently associated with common sense—is having a rope fastened round his waist by one of the lifeboat crew named Jones—also a common name, not seldom associated with uncommon courage. But Brown must wait a few minutes while his wife is being lowered into the boat.
“Oh! be careful. Do it gently, there’s a good fellow,” roars Brown, in terrible anxiety, as he sees her swung off.
“Never fear, sir; she’s all right,” says Jones, with a quiet reassuring smile, for Jones is a tough old hand, accustomed to such scenes.