At this moment there was a shout to leeward, which was answered
by a scream of joy from those on board the wreck, for there, close
alongside, lay the lifeboat, whose approach had been entirely unseen.
In a few minutes the fifteen men who remained of the twenty-two,
who had formed the crew of the wreck, and the four boys, were on
board her. A tiny sail was set and the boat's head laid towards
Ramsgate.

"I am glad to see you, Master Hargate," the sailor who rowed one
of the stroke oars shouted. He was the man who had lent them the
boat. "I was up in the town looking after my wife, who is sick,
and clean forgot you till it was dark. Then I ran down and found
the boat hadn't returned, so I got the crew together and we came
out to look for you, though we had little hope of finding you. It
was lucky for you we did, and for the rest of them too, for so it
chanced that we were but half a mile away when the ship fired her
first gun, just as we had given you up and determined to go back;
so on we came straight here. Another ten minutes and we should have
been too late. We are making for Ramsgate now. We could never beat
back to Deal in this wind. I don't know as I ever saw it blow much
harder."

These sentences were not spoken consecutively, but were shouted out
in the intervals between gusts of wind. It took them two hours to
beat back to Ramsgate, a signal having been made as soon as they
left the wreck to inform the lifeboat there and at Broadstairs that
they need not put out, as the rescue had been already effected.
The lads were soon put to bed at the sailors' home, a man being
at once despatched on horseback to Deal, to inform those there of