With the forty-six rescued seafarers on board she was terribly low in the water, and was filled in and out from both sides at once by the seas as they broke. Only a lifeboat could have lived, but even she resembled a floating baulk of timber, which is covered and swept by the seas on the same level as itself. Holding on for life to thwarts and life-lines, they kept the lifeboat dead before the sea. They did not dare to luff her to the west or bear her away to the east. They dared not keep away to get to the Walmer lifeboat, nor in the other direction toward the mainland, about six miles off.
The slightest exposure of the broadside of the lifeboat would either have capsized her, or washed every soul out of her; onwards, therefore, dead before the wind and right on the top of and in the breakers of the Goodwins she flew her stormy flight for nearly four miles.
The Walmer lifeboat had got up anchor at the same time as the Kingsdown men; for as the Kingsdown overcrowded lifeboat ran past the Walmer lifeboat, which was waiting at anchor for them, they shouted to the Walmer men, 'Slip your cable, and come after us!'
This the Walmer lifeboat did, and now ventured to approach the Kingsdown lifeboat. Though handled with skill and caution, being light, she took a sea; and she came right on top of the gunwale of the Kingsdown lifeboat, smashing her oars, which were run out to steady her, like so many pipe-shanks, and crunching into her gunwale.
But at last, with difficulty, half of the living freight of the Sabrina was transferred to the Walmer lifeboat; and then both lifeboats luffing in through Trinity Swatch, by God's mercy, escaped the deadly Goodwins, and landed the rescued crew at Broadstairs.
And the gallant deed is still sung by the Kingsdown children in simple village rhymes,
God bless the Lifeboat and its crew,
Its coxswain stout and bold,
And Jarvist Arnold is his name,
Sprung from the Vikings old,
Who made the waves and winds their slaves,
As likewise we do so,
While still Britannia rules the waves,
And the stormy winds do blow;
And the old Cork Float that safety brought,
We'll hold in honour leal,
And it shall grace the chiefest place
In Kingsdown, hard by Deal!
One of Jarvist Arnold's sons never recovered the strain of those awful hours on the bridge of the Sorrento in her death-throes, and, to use his father's words: 'He never was a man no more.' But Jarvist himself did many a subsequent good deed of rescue, and stuck to his arduous post as long as, and even beyond, what health and strength and age permitted.
Would that I could say that the noble old fellow was in independent circumstances! Despite the continued generosity of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to him, alas! this is not the case. Would that some practicable scheme for providing a pension for deserving working men in their old age were before the country!
Jarvist Arnold is, however, not forsaken; he has good and honourable children, and I know that with that inner gaze which sees more clearly as eternity approaches, he too in simple faith beholds the advancing lifeboat, and hears the glad words, 'When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee,' from the mouth of the Great Commander.