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Whether I, too, heard the fall and saw the life-boat manned I don't remember; but I recollect all the more clearly my mother's rushing frantically from the cabin and clasping me tenderly to her heart as her rescued child. So the drama ended happily, but there had been a terrible scene.
There was the life-boat house, with its doors wide open, and the great boat, spick and span in the glory of new paint, standing ready on its rollers, and the record of splendid rescues in past years inscribed upon the walls.
When the sun rose we found we were on a barren island, and, what was more, that one of the ship's life-boats had been upset on a reef which we just missed, and had lost all her stores, though the men had scrambled into safety. With the aid of our boat, and helped by fine weather, we raised the life-boat, and recovered some of her fittings.
This thought took hold of her and found expression in this hymn on a stormy night at Whitby, after she had seen the life-boat put forth to a wreck, hence the expressions, "Pilot," "Lifeboat," and "Haven."
They are a used-up lot of men." So they were, the five who now came walking slowly along from somewhere or other on the coast upon which the disastrous storm had blown. "Captain Kemp and the crew of his life-boat," thought Ned, but he obeyed the señor at first, and was silent until the haggard-looking party arrived and came to a halt in front of him.
Those who had maintained a stubborn air of bravado, now became almost offensively jaunty. Others, frankly terrified at the outset, sauntered timidly away from the life-boats to which they were assigned. Every one was glad that the Captain had ordered a life-boat drill on the first afternoon out, and every one was glad that he had ignored the demand of Mr.
He first called our attention to the splendid qualities of the life-boat: such as its power to right itself if upset; the capability of immediate self-discharge when filled with water; its strength; resistance to overturning; speed against a heavy sea; buoyancy; and facility in launching and taking the shore. We then inspected the diverse apparatuses utilized for rescuing the shipwrecked.
The passengers seemed hardly to dare to breathe till we were over the bar. Some of them had witnessed a frightful wreck there a few years before, when, after a similar waiting in the fog for nearly a week, a vessel attempted to enter the river, and struck on the bar. She was seen for two days from Astoria, but the water was so rough that no life-boat could reach her.
Dozens of the cabin passengers were witnesses of some of the frightful scenes on the steerage deck. The steerage survivors said that ten women from the upper decks were the only cool passengers in the life-boat, and they tried to quiet the steerage women, who were nearly all crazed with fear and grief.
Surely her mind would yield to this increasing madness. Boyle or Gray had never relaxed their vigil by her side. It was Gray who made the thrilling discovery that the canoes were returning. As the fleet crossed the bay it could be seen that they were towing the life-boat. But never a sign of any prisoners could the most careful scrutiny detect.
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