Grace was born at Bamborough, but she had gone with her parents to live at the Longstones when but a few months old. In this desolate home she had grown accustomed to every form of weather; the laughter of a summer’s breeze equally with the wail of a winter’s gale had been her cradle song. As she grew up, she spent the time she was not helping her parents, in rowing and fishing, and when ten or eleven years old her father could trust her to manage the lighthouse boat even in the roughest weather. Grace was no scholar—her opportunities of acquiring information were obviously limited—but she could read and write well, and she made good use of the former accomplishment, eagerly drinking in every scrap of information that her father’s twenty or thirty books contained regarding acts of courage and daring performed by the toilers of the sea either in peace or war. Her great ambition was that, one day, _she_ might have the opportunity of emulating the example of those whose deeds she loved to study. That opportunity came to her at last. At dusk, on September 6, 1838, the wind that throughout the day had been freshening was blowing considerably more than half-a-gale, and in the teeth of this the steamer Forfarshire, hailing from Hull and bound for Dundee, passed between the Farne rocks and the Northumberland coast. The ship was ‘labouring’ heavily, and Grace, as well as her father and mother, eagerly watched her progress till night closing in hid her from their view. With the darkness the wind blew yet more fiercely; all through the night it raged with unpitying fury, and the watchers on the Longstones talked long and anxiously over the vessel that had passed them. Darling did not like the look of her, or the way the storm seemed to be handling her. Neither father, mother, nor daughter took any sleep that night: when not busy tending to the light or wiping the spray from the glass of the lantern they peered into the darkness, thinking perhaps they might catch a glimpse of some signal of distress either from the steamer or some other vessel, yet no light or signal was observable. [Illustration: GRACE DARLING AND HER FATHER ON THE WAY TO THE WRECK.] But the first rays of morning revealed to Darling that his apprehensions for the Forfarshire were well-founded. On Hawkers Rocks, a mile away from the lighthouse, could be seen the remains of the wrecked vessel, the remnant of her living freight clinging to it. What could be done? It seemed madness to launch the lighthouse boat in such a gale, but Grace begged her father to make the attempt; she would go with him, she said, and God, she felt sure, would give them strength to perform the daring enterprise.