when, through all the tumult of the wind and waves, a fierce hiss,
vindictive, wrathful, tore the air over our heads. Far up, seawards,
something like a fiery snake shot from the high ground on the right side of
the bay, over the vessel, and into the water beyond it.

"Thank God! that's the coastguard," I cried.

We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had
planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the sea
looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in the
mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down below
the great mass, of the vessel's hulk, with the waves breaking every moment
upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there would
come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I
fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had
all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in
the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot
out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket
had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his
telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result.

"This is a terrible job, sir," he said when I approached him; "I doubt if
we shall save one of them."

"There's the life-boat!" I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters
approaching the vessel from the other side.

"The life-boat!" he returned with contempt. "You don't mean to say they've
got _her_ out! She'll only add to the mischief. We'll have to save her
too."