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This happened close under the head of the pier. All the passengers were recovered by the lifeboat's crew in a few seconds, with the exception of Amy, who, being exhausted by previous exposure, began to sink at once.
'When I looked at the lifeboat's crew and thought of our situation a short while since, and our safety now, and how to rescue us these great-hearted men had imperilled their own lives, I was unmanned; I could not thank them, I could not trust myself to speak.
I sung out to Dick Goldsmith, "Dick," I says, "she's slowed, do you see, she'll never be able to meet it," for she had slackened her engines down into a mere crawl, and I really did think they meant to give up. But there was to be no giving up with the tug's crew any more than with the lifeboat's; she held on, and we followed.
The self-righting principle is one of the most important qualities of the lifeboat. However good it may be in other respects, a boat without this quality is a lifeboat only so long as it maintains its proper position on the water. If upset it is no better than any other boat. It is true that, great stability being one of the lifeboat's qualities, such boats are not easily overturned.
Strand after wire strand was divided, when a great sea came and the vessel trembled from her keel to her truck, and all hands had to hold on for life. Down again came the axe, as the sea went by. But its edge was blunted and it cut slowly, as the wielder doubled his efforts in reply to the shouts, 'Cut the hawser, or the lifeboat's lost!
The lifeboat's anchor was dropped, and again they veered down, but this time it was possible to get to windward, and by reason of the wreckage it was impossible to get to leeward. There was an English pilot on board, who helped to carry out the directions given from the lifeboat, and lines were quickly passed from the wreck.
This time success attended the efforts of the lifeboat's crew, lines being thrown on board of the wreck and secured.
But after all is said that can be said on this point, the subject sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the lifeboat's true work the saving of human lives. There is yet another and still higher sense in which the lifeboat is of immense value to the nation. I refer to the moral influence it exercises among us.
He and his chief boatman mounted first, with a little man named Pengelly, a custom's official, who happened to make one of the lifeboat's crew for the Milo had come from foreign, and thus a show was made of complying with the Queen's regulations. But the whole crowd trooped up close at their heels, and with the crowd clambered Sergeant Archelaus and Sergeant Treacher.
The men in the canoes were aware of the lifeboat's disappearance, and their wet paddles flashed in the sun as they tore across the three miles of open water which separated the southern promontory from the inner shore of the island. After a phenomenal spell of fine weather in that storm-swept latitude, the atmosphere was transparent and bright as that of Stornoway on a clear day in December.
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