They loosed the fore-topsail and they set the foretopmast staysail. Tom Adams went or waded forwards, holding on carefully, with a lantern, and he watched by the dim light till the fore-topmast staysail bellied out with a flap like thunder on the right side, and then he shouted down the wind, 'Hard up, captain! Hard a-port!' At the same instant Roberts shouted, 'Slip the cable! Let go all!' And just within the very jaws of the breakers, the ship's head payed away to the southward, and she escaped--saved at the last minute, and safe to the open sea. When safe away and running before the gale, the Deal men strapped the rudder-head with ropes, straining them tight with a tackle, and then wedged the ropes tighter and tighter still, making the rudder head thoroughly safe. And then, though only very poorly and miserably supplied with food--for they only had dry biscuits till they reached port--they manned the pumps with the worn-out crew, and brought the ship safe to Cowes. But for the existence of a lifeboat at North Deal the ship would have been wrecked that night on the stormy beach of Deal, and, in all probability, her crew would also have perished. It is pleasant to record the unselfish heroism of the Deal lifeboatmen, who on this occasion were the means of saving both valuable property and precious human lives. CHAPTER X THE MANDALAY The leak we've found, it cannot pour fast; We've lightened her a foot or more-- Up and rig a jury foremast, She rights! She rights, boys! Wear off shore! The case of the Mandalay here recorded so far resembles that of the Royal Arch and of the Edina, that in all three cases the vessels, the cargoes, and the lives of all on board, were saved by the Deal lifeboatmen, and by their courage and seamanlike skill, and intimate local knowledge of the Goodwins and other places and sands in their dangerous vicinity, brought safe to port. The Royal Arch was drifting at night from her anchorage in the Downs, in an easterly gale towards the surf-beaten shore. The Edina was in the most imminent peril on the edge of the Brake Sand. The Mandalay was on the Goodwins itself, and to save a vessel and her cargo from the Goodwins is no easy task. On December 13, 1889, the Mandalay was passing the North Sand Head lightship a little after midnight. She was outward bound from Middlesbrough to the River Plate with a cargo of railway iron sleepers. They hailed the lightship as its great lantern rapidly flashed close to them, but the reply was lost in the plash of the sea and the flap of the sails and the different noises of a ship in motion. At any rate the Mandalay mistook her bearings, and managed to get into the very heart of the Goodwin Sands.