Meanwhile the waves dashed the vessel again and again on the rock, and at last a larger billow than the rest lifted her up and let her fall down upon its sharp edge. The effect was tremendous and instantaneous; the vessel was literally broken in two pieces, and the after-part, with the greater number of the passengers in the cabin, was swept away through the Fifa Gut, a tremendous current which is considered dangerous even in good weather. Among those who thus perished were the captain and his wife. The forepart of the steamer, with the few who had happily taken refuge upon it, remained fast on the rock. Here eight or nine of the passengers and crew clung to the windlass, and a woman named Sarah Dawson, with her two little children, lay huddled together in a corner of the fore-cabin, exposed to the fury of winds and waves all the remainder of that dreadful night. For hours each returning wave carried a thrill of terror to their hearts; for the shattered wreck reeled before every shock, and it seemed as if it would certainly be swept away into the churning foam before daybreak. But daylight came at last, and the survivors on the wreck began to sweep the dim horizon with straining eyeballs as a faint hope at last began to arise in their bosoms. Nor were these trembling hopes doomed to disappointment. At the eleventh hour God in his mercy sent deliverance. Through the glimmering dawn and the driving spray the lighthouse-keeper's daughter from the lonely watch-tower descried the wreck, which was about a mile distant from the Longstone. From the mainland, too, they were observed; and crowds of people lined the shore and gazed upon the distant speck, to which, by the aid of telescopes, the survivors were seen clinging with the tenacity of despair. But no boat could live in that raging sea, which still lashed madly against the riven rocks, although the violence of the storm had begun to abate. An offer of 5 pounds by the steward of Bamborough Castle failed to tempt a crew of men to launch their boat. One daring heart and willing hand was there, however. Grace Darling, fired with an intense desire to save the perishing ones, urged her father to launch their little boat. At first he held back. There was no one at the lighthouse except himself, his wife, and his daughter. What could such a crew do in a little open boat in so wild a sea? He knew the extreme peril they should encounter better than his daughter, and very naturally hesitated to run so great a risk. For, besides the danger of swamping, and the comparatively weak arm of an inexperienced woman at the oar, the passage from the Longstone to the wreck could only be accomplished with the ebb-tide; so that unless the exhausted survivors should prove to be able to lend their aid, they could not pull back again to the lighthouse.