Some of the vessels might need a pilot to take them to Margate Roads or northwards, or some might require a spare yard, or men to man the pumps, or an anchor and chain, the vessels in some cases riding to their last remaining anchor--or perhaps their windlass had given way or the hawse pipe had split, and in that case their own chain cable would cut them down to the water's edge in a few hours. To meet these various needs of the vessels, the great luggers were all day being continuously beached and launched, and it was hard to say which of the two operations was most perilous to themselves or most fascinating to the spectator. Once afloat they hovered about, on the wing as it were, among the vessels, and from the beach it could be seen how crowded with men they were, and how admirably they were handled. The skill of the Deal boatmen is generally supposed to be referred to in the lines: Where'er in ambush lurk the fatal sands, They claim the danger, proud of skilful bands; Fearless they combat every hostile wind, Wheeling in mazy tracks with course inclined. The passage has certainly a flavour of the Goodwins but at any rate the sea-bird does not sweep to the raging summit of a wave, or glide more easily from its seething crest down the dark deep blue slope to its windless trough, or more safely than the Deal boatmen in their luggers. Richard Roberts had been all that day afloat in the Downs in his powerful 'cat,' the Early Morn. It was this boat, some of my readers may remember, which picked up, struggling in the water, twenty-four of the passengers of the Strathclyde, when she was run down off Dover by the Franconia, some years ago. But the gale increasing towards evening, Roberts, who had got to leeward too much, could not beat home, and he had to run away before the wind and round the North Foreland to Margate. Thence he took train, and leaving his lugger in safety, reached Deal about nine p.m., just as the flash from the Gull lightship, and then the distant boom of a gun and again another flash, proclaimed there was a ship ashore on the sands. And through the wild rain gusts he saw the flare of a vessel in distress on the Brake Sand--God have mercy on them! for well he knew the hard and rocky nature of that deadly spot. Then rang out wildly above the storm-shriek the summons from the iron throat of the lifeboat bell, 'Man the lifeboat! Man the lifeboat!' The night was dark, the ponderous surf thundered on the shingle, and there could be seen the long advancing lines of billows breaking into white masses of foam; and outside that there was only the blackness of sea and sky, and the tossing lights and flares and signals calling for help. 'No lanterns could be kept lit that night, sir! Blowed out they was, and we had to feel our way in the lifeboat.'