"The name of our wrecked vessel is the _Effort_; it is now several days since we sailed from the Forth, bound for Rotterdam, and ever since we have had a a terrible time of it, nothing but gale after gale, the wind flying about in all directions, until you can guess we were pretty well tired of all this beating about in the North Sea; what with the wind driving us first in one direction and then in another--what with contrary tides and thick weather--we soon lost our reckoning, and must have been caught in the lee drift of the tide, and thus got carried on to the Goodwin Sands. We grounded heavily, at once felt the danger we were in, and hoisted lamps as signals of distress, but we knew that these could not be made out at any distance in such thick weather, and hurried to get a tar-barrel on deck to set fire to it, and make a good blaze; but our vessel was very light--she rolled from side to side almost yard arms under, and suddenly capsized altogether. At once, and with difficulty, we made for the weather-rigging, and were glad to find that not any of the crew were lost as she fell over. We lashed ourselves to the rigging. We knew to our great joy that the tide was falling; had it been rising we must have very soon been overrun by it, the vessel broken up, and every man of us lost. We were in danger enough as it was, for the brig soon after she capsized was caught by the tide, and worked round with her deck towards the seas; and as the heavy seas broke over her and came rushing up the deck, they fell on us with terrible weight, and beat us and crushed us against the ship's rail, so that we were forced to unlash ourselves from the rigging, and what to do we did not know, till one of us said, 'Our only chance is to lash the end of the ropes round our waists, and let go the rigging as the waves come,' and so we did; and terrible work it was. As the waves came we slackened the ropes and went away a little with them, and as they passed, half smothered as we were, hauled ourselves back to the rigging and held on a bit; and then, when the next wave came, we let go, and were all adrift in the wash again; our hands were almost torn to pieces with the strain on the ropes, and grasping at the side of the vessel." And they shewed where their hands were torn, with the nails almost drawn from the finger ends. "You see, too, how our clothes were nearly dragged off us; it was indeed an awful time. We encouraged each other as well as we could, but soon became too exhausted to speak much, and just went struggling on. The topmast heads were right down in the Sands, and every moment we expected the masts would break off short, and then the vessel would have rolled over, and it would have been death to us at once--but while there was life there was hope, and so we held on, just hoping against hope, and so we would not despair, but seemed to gather a little bit of courage, again and again struggling to prolong, for a few minutes, the