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The next venture of the Deal lifeboat was not so fortunate. It was made to the schooner Peerless, wrecked in Trinity Bay, in the very heart of the Goodwins. The men were lashed in the rigging, and the sea was flying over them, or rather at them; but all managed to get into the lifeboat except one poor lad who was on his first voyage.
Lindsay had recovered from her indisposition, and could pay her intended visit to the Goodwins, a circumstance occurred which suggested to Harry Woodward one of the most remorseless and Satanic schemes that ever was concocted in the heart of man. He was in the habit occasionally of going down to the kitchen to indulge in a smoke and a piece of banter with the servants.
The night was somewhat clearer when I reached the poop, and I could make out the fine flood of light that came from the North Foreland; while it was evident that we had taken the outer passage and should pass on the French side of the Goodwins.
Previously, on a fine calm day, with light breeze, I was standing across the Goodwins, bound to the East Goodwin lightship, and we could hear the roar of the ripple on the Goodwins not breakers, but ripple at a distance of two miles. We were sucked into that ugly-looking ripple by an irresistible current, and after an anxious half-hour we got through safely.
Alcott removed with her family in 1846, and the two years that followed is the period which Louisa looked back upon as the happiest of her life, "for we had," she says, "charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings, Hawthornes, and Goodwins, with the illustrious parents and their friends to enjoy our pranks and share our excursions."
About midnight the rising tide had again covered the Goodwins, but the surface, no longer fair and calm, was now lashed into fury by the gale.
It does not appear what Cicero meant by the "mirificae moles" which guarded the approaches to Britain, whether Dover Cliff or the masses of sand under water at the Goodwins. The summer had passed off gloriously for the Roman arms. The expedition to Britain had produced all the effects which Caesar expected from it, and Gaul was outwardly calm.
The Ganges had by this time struck on the middle part of the Goodwins, and the sea was breaking mast-high over her. Her lights and flares had gone out, and the lifeboat had the greatest difficulty in finding her. Just when the lifeboatmen were in perplexity, she again burned blue lights, and these guided the advancing boat.
A few hurried questions from the mate elicited all that it was needful to know. The flash of a gun from the South-Sand-Head lightship, about six miles distant, had been seen, followed by a rocket, indicating that a vessel had got upon the fatal Goodwins. While the men spoke, I saw the bright flash of another gun, but heard no report, owing to the gale carrying the sound to leeward.
But, on this occasion, add to the picture the distant and apparently deserted figure just seen through the rifts in the mist, 'wildly running to and fro on the Goodwins, the eager and sympathetic faces of the boatmen in their absolute helplessness for a few long hours hours that seemed centuries to all of us.
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