A tremendous gale is blowing from the south-east, sleet driving like needles--enough, almost, to put your eyes out. A "good ship," under close-reefed topsails, is bearing up for port after a prosperous voyage, but the air is so thick with drift that they cannot make out the guiding lights. She strikes and sticks fast on outlying sands, where the sea is roaring and leaping like a thousand fiends in the wintry blast. There are passengers on board from the Antipodes, with boxes and bags of gold-dust, the result of years of toil at the diggings. They do not realise the full significance of the catastrophe. No wonder--they are landsmen! The tide chances to be low at the time; as it rises, they awake to the dread reality. Billows burst over them like miniature Niagaras. The good ship which has for many weeks breasted the waves so gallantly, and seemed so solid and so strong, is treated like a cork, and becomes apparently an egg-shell! Night comes--darkness increasing the awful aspect of the situation tenfold. What are boxes and bags of gold-dust now--now that wild despair has seized them all, excepting those who, through God's grace, have learned to "fear no evil?" Suddenly, through darkness, spray, and hurly-burly thick, a ghostly boat is seen! The lifeboat! Well do the seamen know its form! A cheer arouses sinking hearts, and hope once more revives. The work of rescuing is vigorously, violently, almost fiercely begun. The merest child might see that the motto of the lifeboat-men is "Victory or death." But it cannot be done as quickly as they desire; the rolling of the wreck, the mad plunging and sheering of the boat, prevent that. A sturdy middle-aged man named Brown--a common name, frequently associated with common sense--is having a rope fastened round his waist by one of the lifeboat crew named Jones--also a common name, not seldom associated with uncommon courage. But Brown must wait a few minutes while his wife is being lowered into the boat. "Oh! be careful. Do it gently, there's a good fellow," roars Brown, in terrible anxiety, as he sees her swung off. "Never fear, sir; she's all right," says Jones, with a quiet reassuring smile, for Jones is a tough old hand, accustomed to such scenes. Mrs Brown misses the boat, and dips into the raging sea. "Gone!" gasps Brown, struggling to free himself from Jones and leap after her, but the grasp of Jones is too much for him. "Hold on, sir? _she's_ all right, sir, bless you; they'll have her on board in a minute." "I've got bags, boxes, _bucketfuls_ of gold in the hold," roars Brown. "Only save her, and it's all yours!" The shrieking blast will not allow even _his_ strong voice to reach the men in the lifeboat, but they need no such inducement to work.