Saved by the Lifeboat

Excerpt

The Wreck in the Bay.

On a dark November afternoon, not many years ago, Captain Boyns sat smoking his pipe in his own chimney-corner, gazing with a somewhat anxious expression at the fire. There was cause for anxiety, for there raged at the time one of the fiercest storms that ever blew on the shores of England.

The wind was howling in the chimney with wild fury; slates and tiles were being swept off the roofs of the fishermen’s huts and whirled up into the air as if they had been chips of wood; and rain swept down and along the ground in great sheets of water, or whirled madly in the air and mingled with the salt spray that came direct from the English Channel; while, high and loud above all other sounds, rose the loud plunging roar of the mighty sea.

“I fear there will be a call before long, Nancy, for the services of the new lifeboat,” said Captain Boyns, rising and taking down an oilcloth coat and sou’-wester, which he began to put on leisurely; “I’ll go down to the beach and see what’s doin’ at the Cove.”

The captain was a fine specimen of a British sailor. He was a massive man, of iron build, and so tall that his sou’-wester almost touched the ceiling of his low-roofed parlour. His face was eminently masculine, and his usual expression was a compound of sternness, gravity, and good-humour. He was about forty years of age, and, unlike the men of his class at that time, wore a short curly black beard and moustache, which, with his deeply bronzed countenance, gave him the aspect of a foreigner.

“God help those on the sea,” said Mrs Boyns, in reply to her husband’s remark; “I’m thankful, Dan, that you are on shore this night.”

Nancy was a good-looking, lady-like woman of thirty-three or thereabouts, without anything particularly noteworthy about her. She was busy with her needle at the time we introduce her, and relapsed into silence, while her stalwart husband pulled on a pair of huge sea-boots.

“Did you hear a gun, Nancy?” cried the captain, as a terrific blast shook every timber in the cottage—“there! ain’t that it again?”

Nancy listened intently, but could hear nothing save the raging of the storm. The captain completed his toilet, and was about to leave the room when the door suddenly burst open, and a lad of about fourteen years of age sprang in.

“Father,” he cried, his eyes flashing with excitement, “there’s a brig on the sands, and they are going to launch the new lifeboat!”

“Whereaway is’t, lad?” asked Boyns, as he buttoned up his coat.

“To lee’ard of the breakwater.”

“Oh Harry, don’t be too venturesome,” cried Mrs Boyns earnestly, as her strapping boy was about to follow his father out into the pelting storm.

Harry, who was tall and strong for his age, and very like his father in many respects, turning round with a hearty smile, cried, “No fear, mother,” and next instant was gone.

The scene on the beach when father and son reached it was very impressive. So furious was the gale that it tore up sand and gravel and hurled it against the faces of the hardy men who dared to brave the storm....