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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.

"But a wonder," he observed now, as he had observed a score of times before on nearing her "a wonder they wouldn't put one of those new class o' steam lightships out here. If I was you, Bowen, I'd have an eye to the life-boat you see hanging to her stern there." "Why?" "Well, if the old hooker went adrift, you might need it." "What's her sails for?" "I dunno. I often wondered, though.

If I had thought upon the matter at all, I should naturally have expected to see the name of the ship set forth in, to me, unintelligible hieroglyphics, but instead, there it was in plain homely English, and I comforted myself with the reflection that if the Japanese used British characters and words to distinguish their lightships, my as yet very imperfect knowledge of their tongue was not going to handicap me as heavily as I had feared.

The vessel's flare had now burned out, and the guns and rockets from the lightships had ceased, and in front of the lifeboat was only the chill night, 'black as a wolf's throat. As they worked away from the shore there came in, borne landwards and towards them by the gale, the dull deep roar of the surf on the Goodwins. It is marvellous how far the sound of the sea on the Goodwins travels.

Less picturesque than lighthouses and lightships, and with far less of human interest about them, are the buoys of various sorts of which the Lighthouse Board has more than one thousand in place, and under constant supervision. Yet, among the sailor's safeguards, they rank near the head.

The coxswain had to decide what signals were to be regarded as false alarms, and there are many such; sometimes, it is said in Ramsgate, the flash of the Calais lighthouse is taken for a ship burning flares and in distress on the Goodwins, and draws the signal guns from the lightships.

But as soon as a national government took the duty in hand, the task of lighting the mariner's pathway was pressed with vigor. By 1820 the eight lights had increased to fifty-five. To-day there are 1306 lighthouses and lighted beacons, and forty-five lightships. As for buoys, foghorns, day beacons, etc., they are almost uncounted. The board which directs this service was organized in 1852.

In those times, and even recently, the Deal boatmen, including in that title the men of Walmer and Kingsdown, were said to number over 1000 men; and as there were no lightships around the Goodwin Sands till the end of the eighteenth century, there were vessels lost on them almost daily, and there were daily salvage jobs or 'hovels' and rescues of despairing crews; and what with the trade with the men-of-war, and the piloting and berthing of ships, there were abundant employment and much salvage for all the boatmen.

They also assist in laying down new buoys and sinkers, and removing old ones, etcetera. Lightships run considerable risk, for besides being exposed at all times to all the storms that rage on our shores, they are sometimes run into by ships in foggy weather. The Gull lightship, above referred to, occupies a peculiar and interesting position.

An air from the west, cooled by a midday thunderstorm, followed the steamer as she slid through the calm channels of the Thames estuary, passed the cordon of scintillating lightships that watch over the sea-roads to the imperial city like pickets round a sleeping army, and slipped out into the dark spaces of the North Sea.