Therefore, though swept to leeward, they got sail on the lifeboat and got her on the starboard tack, ten men sheeting home the fore sheet. 'Bad job this!' they said, for words were few that night, and they made through the surf for the tug, which was on the look-out for them, and steered for the blue light they burned. Nothing can be more ghastly than the effect of this blue light on the faces of the men or on the wild hurly-burly of boiling snow white foam one moment seen raging round the lifeboat, and the next obliterated in darkness, the more pitchy by reason of the extinguished flare. The blue light was seen by the Aid, and she moved to leeward to pick up the lifeboat after she emerged from the breakers. Again the tug-boat passed her hawser on board the lifeboat, and once more towed her to windward to the same position as before; and once again, burning to save the despairing sailors, the lifeboatmen dropped anchor and veered out their last remaining cable, well-knowing this was the last chance, as they had only the one remaining cable. Tight as a fiddle string was the good hawser, and the howling north-easter hummed its weird tune along its vibrating length, as coil after coil was paid out in the lulls, and the lifeboat came closer and closer, and at last slued right under the starboard quarter of the wreck. By hand-lights, blue and green, they saw, high up in the air, the unfortunate crew lashed in the weather-rigging, i. e. on the port or left side of the wreck, the side opposite to that under shelter of which they lay. The shelter was a poor one, for great seas broke over the wreck and into the lifeboat on the other side. The men were lashed half-way up the weather rigging of the mizzenmast, and the lifeboatmen shouted to them to come over and drop into the lifeboat. To do this, they, half-frozen as they were, had to unlash themselves from the weather-rigging and, in the awful cold and darkness, climb up to the mast-head, where the lee-rigging or shrouds met more closely the weather-rigging. Every giant sea shook the wreck; every billow swayed her masts backwards and forwards so that they 'buckled' like fishing-rods, and the marvel is any man of the benumbed crew succeeded in getting across from the weather side to the lee-rigging aloft. It must be borne in mind that the deck was under water and 'raked' by every sea, and that the only possible way of reaching the lifeboat was by going up the rigging from the place where the wrecked crew were lashed, and coming down--if only they could reach across--the other side, which was next the lifeboat, and thence jumping or being hauled into her. The topsails were in ribbons, and as the wrecked sailors clambered aloft the great whips of torn canvas lashed and terrified and wounded them. By great effort they got across the black gulf between the two riggings--all but the captain.