they're alive to feel it." The thought of them made our own sufferings small, and we kept looking and looking into the darkness around, but there was nothing to be spied, only now and again and long whiles apart the flash of a rocket in the sky from the Sunk lightship. Meanwhile, from time to time, we burnt a hand-signal--a light, sir, that's fired something after the manner of a gun. You fit it into a wooden tube, and give a sort of hammer at the end a smart blow, and the flame rushes out, and a bright light it makes, sir. Ours were green lights, and whenever I set one flaring I couldn't help taking notice of the appearance of the men. It was a queer sight, I assure you, to see them all as green as leaves, with their cork jackets swelling out their bodies so as scarcely to seem like human beings, and the black water as high as our mast-head, or howling a long way below us, on either side. They burned hand-signals on the tug, too, but nothing came of them. There was no sign of the wreck, and staring over the edge of the boat, with the spray and the darkness, was like trying to see through the bottom of a well. 'So we began to talk the matter over, and Tom Cooper says, "We had better stop here and wait for daylight." "I'm for stopping," says Steve Goldsmith; and Bob Penny says, "We're here to fetch the wreck, and fetch it we will, if we wait a week." "Right," says I; and all hands being agreed--without any fuss, sir, though I dare say most of our hearts were at home, and our wishes alongside our hearths, and the warm fires in them--we all of us put our hands to our mouths and made one great cry of "Vulcan ahoy!" The tug dropped astern. "What do you want?" sings out the skipper, when he gets within speaking distance. "There's nothing to be seen of the vessel, so we had better lie-to for the night," I answered. "Very good," he says, and then the steamer, without another word from her crew, and the water tumbling over her bows like cliffs, resumed her station ahead, her paddles revolving just fast enough to keep her from dropping astern.