The helm was put down, the foresheet eased off, and round came the boat nobly on the very pinnacle of a surge, pausing a moment as she was there poised, and then plunging into the hollow to rise again with her foresail full, and heading some points to windward of the vessel we were now steering for.

Through it we stormed, sea after sea bursting from the lifeboat's bow in pallid clouds which the wind sent whirling in shrieks—so articulate was the sound of the slinging spray—into the blackness landwards. Here and there a tiny spark of lamp flickering in the thick of the gloom told us the situation of Tintrenale; but there was nothing more to be seen that way; the land and the sky above it met in a deep, impenetrable dye, towards which, to leeward of us, the tall seas went flashing in long yearning coils, throbbing into mere pallidness when a cable's length distant.

They had kindled another flare aboard the barque, or else had plied the old one with fresh fuel: she was visible by the light of the flames, the white of her furled canvas coming and going to the fluctuating fires; and I marked, with a heart that sank in me, the dreadful manner of her labouring. She was pitching bows under, and rolling too, and by the shining of the signal-fire upon her deck offered a most wonderful sight, rendered terrible also by a view that we could now get of a crowd of men hanging in a lump in her starboard fore-rigging.

The second coxswain flashed a portfire that they might know the lifeboat was at hand, and we went plunging and sweeping down to a point some little distance ahead of the barque, the crowd of us irradiated by the stream of emerald-green flame.

'All ready with the anchor, lads?' I shouted.

'All ready, sir!' was the answer.

'Down foresail!' and as I gave this order I put the helm down and brought the boathead to wind about thirty fathoms ahead of the ship.

'Let go the anchor!'

'Unstep the foremast!' bawled the second coxswain, and, while this was doing, he and another swiftly lifted the mizzenmast out of its bearings and laid it along.

'Veer away cable handsomely!' I shouted; and pitching and foaming, now dropping into a hollow that seemed fifty feet deep, now appearing to scale a surge that lifted the boat's bow almost dead on end over her stern—all in a fashion to make the brain of the stoutest and most experienced among us reel 

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