The boat, one of the finest of her class on the coast, and fitted with a double row of empty kegs on either side to give her buoyancy (one of the earliest attempts at a life boat), was now hauled up in a cove on the west side of the bay. The captain had ordered as many ropes as could be collected to be brought down. These were now coiled up carefully at the bow and stern, ready for immediate use. The oars were secured by ropes to the sides of the boat, so that they could not be washed away, but would swing fore and aft. “All ready, lads?” cried the captain, “Now altogether, shove, and off she goes!” The united strength of her crew, and some twenty other men, quickly launched her on the water of the comparatively sheltered bay. “Remember!” cried the captain, standing up in the stern-sheets, and looking back at Tom. “Shove off, lads! Give way! We shall be wanted out there before long.”
Bravely the men bent to their oars. Not many minutes had passed when the boat got from under the shelter of the headland, and exposed to the full force of the storm. It seemed scarcely possible that a boat could live amidst the foaming, roaring seas which came rolling in towards the beach. Her head was put at them, and on she went—now hid from view by the seething mass of water—now reappearing on the summit of a wave. On she went, in the teeth of the gale—on—on—rising and falling, every instant in danger of being swallowed up by the fiercely-leaping seas. Many of those who stood on the beach, cried—“The Lord have mercy on them!”
Chapter Three.
The Wreck—Sailors’ Humanity—The Negro—The Young Stranger.
Two persons were watching the storm and the progress of the solitary boat over the foaming water, from one of the windows of the old tower. Both, as they watched, were praying that He who rules the wind would protect the husband and the father, and those with him, from the dangers to which they were exposed. Mrs Askew looked through the telescope at the boat, a mere speck in the troubled ocean, till her eyes grew dim and her heart sank with anxiety, and she was compelled to relinquish her post to Margery.
The dismasted ship was some way to the south-west.
“The boat goes on bravely!” cried Margery.
“Now she is on the top of a wave—now she sinks into the trough—she is rising again though—yes, yes, there she is! But the ship—they will grieve to be too late; yet she is driving fearfully near those dark rocks! and I heard papa say that not a human being would escape from the ship that once strikes them.”