The harbour-master was an important person, and he felt the dignity of his office. Perhaps he did not like the unceremonious way the would-be crew had come into his presence; one sometimes forgets to be duly respectful when the lives of an unknown number of one’s fellow-men are at stake, and may be saved by haste; any way, he heard this news from the breathless spokesmen without much visible sympathy. ‘Have the distress-signals been noticed at Ramsgate?’ he inquired. ‘No,’ cried the sailors, ‘at Deal; Deal has telegraphed here, and we want your orders for the harbour-tug to tow us out to the Sands.’ The harbour-master smiled. ‘That, I fear, is not official intimation,’ he said, and continued the discharge of important duties at his desk! Ramsgate was astir? The official answer had somehow not been received by the knots of sailors who thirsted to save life with the admiration the harbour-master perhaps expected. Further telegrams came from Deal at 8 and 9, that signals of distress were still going up from the Sands, and an angry crowd _demanded_ the use of the tug, that, with steam up, lay in the harbour. ‘Go in your own luggers, if you will go!’ shouted the harbour-master, whose official dignity was now relaxing into official indignation; but he knew that was practically an impossibility. Then, at 9.15, came the welcome cry, ‘A signal from the South Sand lightship.’ The benevolent harbour-master forthwith untied the red tape that held the steam-tug to her moorings; and towing the lifeboat behind her, she plunged into the storm. On she went, steaming her hardest towards the Goodwins, and as those on board her and on the lifeboat neared the Sands they saw the lights of the breaking ship; nearer still, and the cries of the perishing crew could be heard. The lifeboat is set free, her sail hoisted, and she makes for the Sands! The lights disappear, the shouting ceases, and presently a faint light shines from the sea nearer to them. Then, through the blackness of the night, the lifeboat crew can see a ship’s boat coming towards them; a rope is thrown, and she is hauled alongside the lifeboat. The men, five in number, drenched and exhausted, are taken on board: these are the remnant of the Gutenberg’s crew of thirty-one, that for nearly four hours clung to their ship as the waves dashed her to pieces on the Goodwins, and were sacrificed to an official’s ‘sense of duty!’ But what about the history of attempts to mark with lights the dangers of what legend calls the once cultivated estate of Earl Godwin? These dangers were well known to the mariner of old, and have for long been sung in sea-song. But the ever-shifting nature of the sands left the lighthouse builder of bygone days without hope of the possibility of placing upon them a warning to navigators of their exact position.