The sight of her put a full spirit of civilisation into the desolate scene; and yet I guessed that exquisite distress lay dumb for distance only in that open leaping boat, gone now behind a hill of brine, now straining her square of cloths aslant on a rolling peak. I sang out to the fellow at the wheel to let her go off by a point, and was going to make my report to the captain when he appeared. His eye caught the boat in a moment, and exclaiming, 'What have we here?' he levelled the glass and said: 'Pretty nigh a whole ship's company adrift.' We closed her rapidly and were presently within hail. 'Take us aboard for God's sake, sir! Half of us are dead with the cold,' cried a lamentable voice, no man, whoever he was that spoke, rising nevertheless. We manœuvred that she might sheer alongside; we then backed our topsail yard and her sail dropped with a run. But the men seemed scarcely to have life enough to catch hold of the coil of rope that was flung to them, and then when she lay hard by you saw by the rise of her to the height of our topgallant sail, then by the fall of her into a hollow twenty feet deep, that if those men were to be rescued they must be whipped aboard. So a tackle was secured to the main yard-arm, and the rope slackened away to let the boat soar and sink fair under the whip; the captain then sang out for the strongest to send the weakest, themselves following. A huge, fine fellow with red whiskers answered with a paralytic flourish of his hand, and without delay the whip end was secured to one of the people and quickly as might be he was swayed aboard. I was too busy with superintending these proceedings to do more than glance at the first of them as they hauled him over the side; and just took notice that he was a short man, cloaked and thickly wrapped, with bushy hair, not a sailor, and he looked frozen to death. He was carried into the cabin and another man was got aboard; he too seemed lifeless. There were nine or ten, I am not sure. One by one we swayed them over the rail, the last man to come being the big fellow with the red whiskers. Those who seemed dead--of these there were four--were carried into the cabin; the others who were able to crawl were helped into the forecastle. 'What's to be done with the boat, sir?' said I to the captain. 'Oh, what can be done with her?' said he, with a shrug and an askant look of longing at the fine little craft. 'We should drown her if we towed her, and we can do nothing with her now. Let her go.'