The more threatening and heavy the weather, the greater the probability of disaster occurring, or having occurred, then the more ready are her crew to work their way out to the Goodwin Sands, and to cruise round them on the look-out for vessels in distress; they dare not take the lugger into the broken water--there a life-boat alone can live; but still she is a grand sea-boat, one that will stagger on with a ship's heavy anchor and chain on board, through weather bad enough for anything--a boat that is well suited for the hard and dangerous service which employs her during the winter months. Her crew consists of ten men; the men get no regular pay, but any salvage or reward for services they may obtain is divided into fourteen shares: the boat takes three and a half shares for her owners, one half share goes to the provision account, as the crew when on board are supplied by the owners with provisions, and one share is given to each of the men--this is the ordinary arrangement. Complaints are sometimes made of the amounts charged by these men for services rendered; but the cases of a good hovel are few and far between; and often the luggers put out to sea, night after night, throughout a stormy winter, hanging about the Sands, in wind and rain, and snow and mists, the men half frozen with the cold, and half smothered with the flying surf and spray, and often week after week they thus suffer and endure, and do not make a penny-piece each man; working their hardest, without any other result, than that of getting more and more into debt at home, and almost tempted to become disheartened with it all, hardly able to hope against hope; then at last, perhaps, comes a chance--a big ship is on the tail of a sand bank; they render assistance and get her off; if she had remained there another tide she would probably have been knocked to pieces: they have saved thousands of pounds' worth of property; and the captain, and the owners, and the underwriters, all look aghast, and cry out with indignation, when they ask perhaps a sum that will give them ten or fifteen pounds a man--do something to pay the scores that have been growing month after month, something to requite them for the weary watching, and labour, and suffering, that they have had so many weeks in vain. No! let those who grumble at the demands made on such occasions, feel fully assured that they know many easier, more pleasant, and more profitable ways of making money, than by hovering around the Goodwin Sands throughout the nights of a stormy winter, on the look-out for vessels in distress. The following tale will illustrate, in its simple narration of actual facts, some of the dangers to which the men are exposed when on such service.