This took time. Again in the fury of the storm the word was given 'Up anchor!' and 'Run down closer to the wreck!' and again the anchor was dropped to the best of the judgment of the coxswain. Fish and Cooper were first and second coxswains ten years before, and exactly ten years before to the day and hour the same brave men were in a similar desperate struggle at the wreck of the Indian Chief. In the tremendous sea the anchor was for the second time dropped well to windward of the wreck. The hull was under water, and over it the hungry sea broke in pyramids or solid sheets of flying, freezing spray. As they veered out their cable and came towards the wreck bows foremost, for they anchored the lifeboat this time by the stern, they could dimly see the cowering, clinging figures in the rigging. They had to pay out their powerful cable most cautiously, for great rollers bursting at the top, and the size of a house, every now and then came racing at them, open-mouthed. I don't believe a man on board remembered it was exactly to the hour ten years since they rescued the crew of the Indian Chief; but their hearts, beating as warmly as ever in the cause of suffering humanity, were concentrated on the present need. They veered down under the stern of the wreck, and passing the cable a little aft in the lifeboat, steered her up under the starboard-quarter of the wreck. They had just got out their grapnel, and were about to throw it into the lee rigging of the wreck, in hopes it would grip and hold--for unless it held of itself no one of the frozen crew could come down to make it fast. Left foot in front, well out on the gunwale, left hand grasping the fore halyards to steady him--strong brave right hand swung back to hurl the grapnel on the next chance, stood a gallant Ramsgate man, when with a roar like the growl of a wild beast, a monstrous sea broke over vessel and lifeboat, not merely filling her up, and over her thwarts, but snapping her strong new Manilla hawser. Those who know the quality of the splendid cables supplied by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution will understand the great force that must have been exerted to snap this mighty hawser. But so it happened, and away to leeward into the darkness, smothered, baffled, and almost drowned, but by no means beaten, were swept on to and into the shallower and more furious surf of the north-west jaw of the Goodwins, the Ramsgate lifeboatmen. Contrast the freezing midnight scene of storm and surf, eight miles from the nearest land, with the quiet sleep of millions. Here was a January midnight, black as a wolf's throat--thermometer 15 deg. below freezing, a mountainous surf on the Goodwins, and only twelve brave men to face it all; but those twelve men were the heroes of a hundred fights, and were determined to save the men on the wreck or die for it.