evening tide, and there was a bright November moon. We gathered in numbers, for among my parishioners there were kind and gentle-hearted men, such as had “pity, tenderness, and tears,” and all were moved by the tale of the sailor, hurled and buried beneath a rock, by the strong and cruel sea. The scene of our first nightly assemblage was a weird and striking sight. Far, far above loomed the tall and gloomy headlands of the coast: around us foamed and raged the boiling waves: the moon cast her massive lowering shadows on rock and sea-- “And the long moonbeam on the cold wet sand Lay, like a jasper column, half upreared.”[52] Stout and stalwart forms surrounded me, wielding their iron bars, pickaxes, and ropes. Their efforts were strenuous but unavailing. The tide soon returned in its strength, and drove us, baffled, from the spot before we had been able to grasp or shake the ponderous mass. It was calculated by competent judges that its weight was full fifteen tons: neither could there be a more graphic image of the resistless strength of the wrathful sea than the aspect of this and similar blocks of rifted stone, that were raised and rolled perpetually, by the power of the billows, and hurled, as in some pastime of the giants, along the shuddering shore! Deep and bitter was the grief of the sailor at our failure and retreat. His piteous wail over the dead recalled the agony of those who are recorded in Holy Writ, they who grieved for their lost ones, “and would not be comforted because they were not!” That night an inspiration visited me in my wakeful bed. At a neighbouring harbour[53] dwelt a relative[54] of mine, who was an engineer, in charge of the machinery on a breakwater and canal. To him at morning light I sent an appeal for succour, and he immediately responded with aidance and advice. Two strong windlasses, worked by iron chains, and three or four skilful men, were sent up by him next day with instructions for their work. Again at evening ebb we were all on the spot. One of our new assistants, a very Tubal-Cain in aspect and stature, and of the same craft with that smith before the Flood, plunged upon the rock as the water reluctantly revealed its upper side, and drilled a couple of holes in the surface with rapid energy, to receive, each of them, that which he called a Lewis-wedge and a ring. To these the chains of the windlasses were fastened on. They then looped a rope around the ankle of the corpse and gave it as the post of honour to me to hold. It was on the evening of Sunday that all this was done, and I had deemed it a venial breach of discipline to omit the nightly service of the Church in order to suit the tide. A Puseyite bishop might have condemned my breach of Rubric and Ritual, but I exercise episcopal authority in my own parish, and accordingly I absolved myself. Forty strong parishioners, all absentees from evening prayer, manned the double windlass power; I intoned the pull; and by