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It invariably aroused him, even from the deepest slumber, to a state of alert expectation that to a woman as hard-working as Mrs. Peck was most exceptionally trying. When Adam scented disaster at sea there was no peace for either. As she was wont to remark, being the wife of the lifeboat coxswain wasn't all jam, not by any manner of means it wasn't.

As he spoke, a faint cry was heard coming from the wreck, and it was seen that one of the masts had gone by the board, carrying, it was feared, several poor fellows along with it. Instantly there was a rush to the lifeboat! All thought of personal danger appeared to have been banished from the minds of the fishermen when the cry of distress broke on their ears.

It is owing to the untiring energy of the National Lifeboat Institution that those figures are not much, very much higher; and it is the Shipwrecked Mariners' Society that alleviates much, very much, of the woe resulting from storms and wrecks upon our shores. Sailors and fishermen know this well, and support both institutions largely.

The long run of the great waves came right up to where the lifeboat lay, so that when she was let go she had no steep slope to rush down so as to hurl her by her own impetus into the sea. She depended, therefore, for her launching against this great sea, on her haul-off warp, which was moored one hundred fathoms out to sea, and by which her fifteen men hoped to pull her out to deep water.

They might have wondered more about it, but it was just at this time that they heard the shouts from the rescue boat the big Mackinaw lifeboat that had put out from the town with fourteen men at the sweeps when they saw the first rockets go up. I suppose there is always something inspiring about a rescue at sea, or on the water.

"I heartily sympathise with you, sir, in designating this a lifeboat-wedding, because, under God, my daughter and I owe our lives to the lifeboat. You are also right in stating that the lifeboat has been the means of preserving my fortunes from being wrecked, because the saving of the Ocean Queen was a momentous turning-point in my affairs.

But I can imagine quite easily, and do not at all desire a closer acquaintance with this restless Indian Ocean. In happy unconsciousness of what landing at East London, even in a lifeboat, meant when a bar had to be crossed, we were all tumbled and bundled, more or less unceremoniously, into the great, roomy boat, and were immediately taken in hand by the busy little tug.

Not a man was lost, and they had with them in the lifeboat the shipwrecked vessel's crew all saved. It was a noble sight to see the lifeboat nearing the land that morning at 7 a.m.

The rays of the little lifeboat had boiled the waters of the ocean; those of the parent craft seemed literally to blast them out of existence. All about the green submarine there had been volumes of furiously-boiling water and dense clouds of vapor; now water and fog alike disappeared, converted into transparent superheated steam by the blasts of Nevian energy.

In the dark the Kingsdown coxswain put his lifeboat into the surf on the Goodwins; it was heavy, but they got through it safely, and found on the off-part of the Goodwins, towards its southern end known as the South Calliper a large steamship aground. She proved to be the Sorrento, bound from the Mediterranean to Lynn.