Still round came the tug, and getting into deeper water of about three or three and a half fathoms, after a most hazardous and gallant passage through the breakers round the vessel, set her engines going full speed ahead. The seas now struck and bumped the Mandalay so heavily that, in spite of all efforts to save her, she was in a most critical position, and at the same time a great disaster nearly occurred. The great steel hawser of the tug, as she strained all her powers, was now tautening and slackening, and then, as steam strove for the mastery against the storm, again tightening with enormous force till it became like a rigid iron bar. It vibrated and swung alongside the lifeboat, which could not get out of the way, and dared not leave the vessel--return to which, had the lifeboat once slipped her anchor, against wind and tide would have been impossible; and their comrades' lives, and those of all, depended on their standing by the vessel. Though the gallant coxswain did all that man could do to combat this new danger, still with a terrific jerk the steel hawser got right under the lifeboat, hoisting her, in spite of her great weight, clean out of the water. Aided by an awful breaker, whose tumultuous and raging advance was seen afar in the moonlight, this powerful jerk of the tightening hawser, which had got under the very keel of the lifeboat, lifted her up so high that she struck in her descent, with her ponderous iron keel or very undermost part of the lifeboat, the top rail of the Mandalay's bulwarks. The marvel is how she escaped being turned right over by the shock. The next day I saw with astonishment the crushed woodwork where this mighty blow had been struck. The lifeboat's rudder was smashed and her great stern post sprung, and one of the crew that remained in her was also injured, but still Roberts held on to the ship. At this critical moment Hanger, seeing the lifeboat's safety was endangered, and regarding it as a question of saving not only his comrades' lives but the lives of all, most reluctantly gave orders to cut the steel hawser of the tug, which was made fast on board the vessel. This would have of course sacrificed all the trouble and risk that had been incurred; another tug-boat had also crept up on the starboard bow to help the first, and efforts were being made to get her hawser too on board; in fact, success and safety seemed almost within their grasp, but it was a matter of life or death, and one of the Deal men, obeying orders, seized an axe and hewed and struck with all his might at the steel hawser, which was still endangering the lifeboat. Strand after wire strand was divided, when a great sea came and the vessel trembled from her keel to her truck, and all hands had to hold on for life. Down again came the axe, as the sea went by. But its edge was blunted and it cut slowly, as the wielder doubled his efforts in reply to the shouts, 'Cut the hawser, or the lifeboat's lost!'