But you should be out in the light-ship there for a night when there's a heavy sea on and the waves makes a clean breach over you. It's a dull life out there at any time, for there's not much to do--only the light to keep trimmed and the glass and reflectors well polished. When I was there we used to pass the time away making models of ships and rigging them, or doing any little nick-nack jobs as took our fancies. Four of us used to be there at a time; and when the dark winter's night was setting in, and the wind and sea getting up, you couldn't help feeling melancholy and low. The place we were in, you see, was a dangerous one, and one where there had been no end of wrecks; while in more than one place you could see the timbers of a half broke-up ship, lying stuck in the sands. Then, as it got dark, and you stood on deck, you could almost fancy the tall white waves were the ghosts of them as had gone down and been lost there--hundreds upon hundreds of them; and that puts me in mind of one night when a full-rigged ship came on the sands. It was a horribly rough afternoon, with a heavy gale blowing; cold, and dark, and dismal it looked all round, and there we were watching this here ship trying hard to give the sands a wide berth, but all to no good, for there she was slowly drifting down nearer and nearer--now lost to sight almost in the fog and spray, and now when it lifted, plain again before us, till she seemed close in amongst the heavy surf. At times our light-ship, heavily moored and strong-built as she was, pitched and strained dreadful, so that it seemed as she must drag or break away, while every now and then a wave would come with such a shock that the heavy timbers quivered again; and of us four men there, every one would have gladly been ashore, and out of those fierce roaring breakers. But no one showed the white feather, and there we were, as I said, watching the big ship, till just as the gloomy winter's night set in, and the gale came shouting by as though the storm meant to make a night of it, we saw the ship for a moment, lost sight of her again, and then, just as there was a bit of an opening in the fog, there she came with a regular leap starn on to the sands, and "snap, snap," two of her masts went overboard in an instant. We had to hold on pretty tightly ourselves, I can tell you, and the water that came aboard at times almost choked us; but with such a scene as that before us, not a man could have gone below, and we stood straining our eyes and trying to make out what was going on. She was too far off for us to make out anything very plainly; but as we looked, up went a rocket, rush into the air, and, leaving its fiery train behind, broke into a shower of sparks. Then there was another and another sent up, and in the flashes of light we could make out as one mast crowded with people still stood, while a regular shudder went through one to think what it would be if that fell.