It will be plain that the tide current was forcing the Kingsdown lifeboat, even when at anchor, away from the distressed vessel, and that if she weighed anchor, she would be carried away to leeward, as the Walmer men had been. Thinking of all expedients, they bent on their second cable and rode to the long scope of one hundred and sixty fathoms. Still the cruel lee-tide and wind forced them away. They sheered the head of the lifeboat in towards the wreck--and then--the six men in her sprang to the oars, and tugged and strained at them, all rowing on the same side, to direct the lifeboat towards the vessel. While they struggled, the great breakers overwhelmed and blinded them, filling many times the gallant little lifeboat--she was only thirty-six feet in length--which as obstinately emptied herself free and lived through it all, by God's good providence. 'Must I see my sons die in my sight, and my friends and neighbours too?' thought Jarvist Arnold, as he was beaten away from the vessel; and then, 'Lord, help me!' Again and again, in vain they struggled, when some one on the wreck sprang from the bridge at the most imminent peril of his life, on to the slippery, sloping wave-swept deck. He had seen coiled on a belaying pin on the bridge a long lead line, and on the deck still unwashed away an old cork fender. Some say it was the mate of the vessel; others that it was one of the Kingsdown men who fastened the lead line to the fender and who slung it overboard, and then, stumbling and slipping, ran for his life back to the bridge, barely escaping an overwhelming wave. Swirling and eddying in the strange currents on the Goodwins, and beaten of the winds and waves, on came the old cork fender towards the lifeboat. They had not another bit of cable to spare on board the lifeboat; every inch of their one hundred and sixty fathoms was paid out. Breathless the coxswain, and the man in the bows, rigid as his own boat-hook with the anxiety of the moment, lashed to his position, a life line round his waist, watched the approach of the fender. It was sucked by the current towards the lifeboat, and then tossed by a wave away from her again. Feeling assured that a great loss of life must soon occur, either by the people on the frail refuge of the steamer's bridge being swept off it, or by the bridge itself being carried away by the seas, which were becoming more solid every moment, Jarvist and his comrades thought the cork fender was a long time in reaching them. Lives of men hung in the balance, and minutes seem hours then. At last it drifted hopelessly out of reach, but into a curious backwater, which eddied it right under the boat hook of the bowman. In an instant it was seized, and the line made fast to a thwart. 'I've a great mind to trust to it,' said Jarvist Arnold, but caution prevailed, and they made fast a stout rope to the lead line.