Battles with the Sea | Page 7

The engines of the Aid are powerful, like her whole frame. Though
fiercely opposed she battled out into the raging sea, now tossed on the
tops of the mighty waves, now swallowed in the troughs between.
Battered by the breaking crests, whelmed at times by "green seas,"
staggering like a drunken thing, and buffeted by the fierce gale, but
never giving way an inch, onward, steadily if slowly, until she rounded
the North Foreland. Then the rescuers saw the signals going up steadily,
regularly, from the two lightships. No cessation of these signals until
they should be answered by signals from the shore.
All this time the lifeboat had been rushing, surging, and bounding in
the wake of her steamer. The seas not only roared around her, but
absolutely overwhelmed her. She was dragged violently over them, and
sometimes right through them. Her crew crouched almost flat on the
thwarts, and held on to prevent being washed overboard. The stout
cable had to be let out to its full extent to prevent snapping, so that the
mist and rain sometimes prevented her crew from seeing the steamer,
while cross seas met and hurled her from side to side, causing her to
plunge and kick like a wild horse.
About midnight the Tongue lightship was reached and hailed. The
answer given was brief and to the point: "A vessel in distress to the
nor'-west, supposed to be on the high part of the Shingles Sand!"
Away went the tug and boat to the nor'-west, but no vessel could be
found, though anxious hearts and sharp and practised eyes were
strained to the uttermost. The captain of the Aid, who knew every foot
of the sands, and who had medals and letters from kings and emperors
in acknowledgment of his valuable services, was not to be balked easily.
He crept along as close to the dangerous sands as was consistent with
the safety of his vessel.
How intently they gazed and listened both from lifeboat and steamer,
but no cry was to be heard, no signal of distress, nothing but the roaring
of the waves and shrieking of the blast, and yet they were not far from

the perishing! The crew of the Demerara were clinging to their
quivering mast close by, but what could their weak voices avail in such
a storm? Their signal fires had long before been drowned out, and those
who would have saved them could not see more than a few yards
around.
Presently the booming of distant cannon was heard and then a faint line
of fire was seen in the far distance against the black sky. The Prince's
and the Girdler lightships were both firing guns and rockets to tell that
shipwreck was taking place near to them. What was to be done? Were
the Shingles to be forsaken, when possibly human beings were
perishing there? There was no help for it. The steamer and lifeboat
made for the vessels that were signalling, and as the exhausted crew on
the quivering mast of the Demerara saw their lights depart, the last
hope died out of their breasts.
"Hope thou in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him," perchance occurred
to some of them: who knows?
Meanwhile the rescuers made for the Prince's lightship and were told
that a vessel in distress was signalling on the higher part of the Girdler
Sands.
Away they went again, and this time were successful. They made for
the Girdler lightship, and on the Girdler Sands they found the Fusilier.
The steamer towed the lifeboat to windward of the wreck into such a
position that when cast adrift she could bear down on her. Then the
cable was slipped and the boat went in for her own special and
hazardous work. Up went her little foresail close-reefed, and she rushed
into a sea of tumultuous broken water that would have swamped any
other kind of boat in the world.
What a burst of thrilling joy and hope there was among the emigrants
in the Fusilier when the little craft was at last descried! It was about one
o'clock in the morning by that time, and the sky had cleared a very little,
so that a faint gleam of moonlight enabled them to see the boat of
mercy plunging towards them through a very chaos of surging seas and

whirling foam. To the rescuers the wreck was rendered clearly visible
by the lurid light of her burning tar-barrels as she lay on the sands,
writhing and trembling like a living thing in agony. The waves burst
over her continually, and, mingling in spray with the black smoke of
her fires, swept furiously away to leeward.
At first each wave had lifted the ship and let her crash down on the
sands, but as