As they get into the Gull stream they see vessel after vessel running with close-reefed topsails before the gale; the boatmen hail them but they get no answer: one little sloop affords them slight hope, for she is evidently altering her course, but after a moment's apparent hesitation, away she goes again before the gale, and abandons them to their fate. The captain of the little vessel related afterwards, how in the height of the storm he saw some poor fellows in a small boat, and had a great wish to try and save them, but the sea was running so high that he felt it was impossible to heave his vessel to, and so had to leave them, and that they must have been driven on the Sands and lost. This sloop was about a quarter of a mile from the boat, and the men do not again get as near to any other ship, and as vessel after vessel passes, and the night begins to grow dark, the position of the men becomes more and more hopeless--and they all feel that if no vessel picks them up, they must soon be blown in again upon the Sands, and there perish. All of the men, except one, are married; the man in the bow has a wife and five children, and it is his thoughts of them that keep him nerved to his work, for although weak, exhausted, and almost fainting, he still sticks to his oar and feebly paddles on; the only single man in the boat is his brother-in-law; and his mind keeps running as much upon what his sister will do, as a widow with five children, as it does upon the thoughts of his own probable fate; and so although the men will not permit themselves to lament or bemoan their almost certain fate, for fear of weakening their own nerves or discouraging each other, each has his solemn conviction of what must soon happen, and is in his own breast thinking of death, and bidding "Good-bye," to the loved ones who are resting those few miles away. The Downs had been full of ships at the commencement of the storm, but as the wind increased in violence and blew right through, the anchorage was no longer safe, and vessel after vessel slipped her cable and ran before the gale; until at last only one vessel, a large American ship, remains at anchor. The boatmen make her out when they are about half a mile from her, and find, to their great joy, that she is almost directly in the path in which they are drifting; to get alongside her is their last hope, for although the tide is now carrying them against the wind and from the Sands, the tide will very soon turn, and then with the tide, and before the wind, they will be swept with terrible speed right in upon the Sands, and must there at once perish, and it will be impossible for them to row against the tide, as all their efforts will still be required to keep the boat bow on to the seas.