The tide sweeps away the piece of deck to which the five men are so desperately clinging--away from the scene of the sad, swift, tragedy, and, by God's mercy, into an eddy of the current away from the surf and breakers which are thundering down in all their fury upon the Sands, and which would have swept the poor sailors at once to destruction if their frail raft had come within their reach. Away in the rough but not now broken seas the men are borne, their only hope the shattered, heaving piece of wreck that forms their raft; the horrors of the dark night are added to by the roar of the breakers as they crash down upon the Sands, and the poor sailors know not but that at any moment they may be met by some fresh eddy of the swift tide, and swept into the midst of that fatal surf. The fierce gale howls over them, the men are exhausted and hopeless, but they manage to lash the captain to the piece of wreck, his two broken legs make him faint and sick with agony; and on and on they float during the long dreary hours of the night. They pass the Gull light-ship, watch its bright and, to them, mocking light, then they are carried to the north-east of the Sands; there they meet the changing tide, and it sets them to the southward, and, to their great joy, away from the fatal Goodwin, away in the direction of Calais, the seas still wash over them. The agony of the captain is almost unendurable, as every wash of the sea, every heave of the frail piece of wreck jars his broken legs; the men have their nails torn from their fingers with the desperate energy with which they clutch the smooth timbers of the piece of deck on which they are lying. Hour after hour passes, and for fifteen hours they thus float about, cold and wet, and wounded, and faint with hunger and thirst; the poor fellows become almost unconscious, and can only just manage to hold on mechanically to their frail support; the morning passes, and they have no energy to look for a passing sail, and no means of signalling if they saw one. Suddenly a loud shout surprises them, and they lift their heads and see, with boundless joy, a large cutter almost alongside the raft; they seem called back from death, and begin to arouse themselves from the swoon into which they were all so rapidly sinking. The cutter is a pilot-boat from Antwerp; they are got on board her not without much difficulty, so helpless are they, and so high is the sea still running; the kind-hearted Belgians have every pity for the most miserable condition of the poor men, and do all they can to restore them; as soon as possible the pilots land them at Deal, and they are taken to the hospital and receive all possible medical care and attention; they soon revive, the captain's broken limbs are set, and he ultimately recovers; and while they mourn over the sad loss of their comrades, they cannot feel too much wonder, or be too deeply thankful, for their own most marvellous escape. CHAPTER XVII.