The men on board the _Princess Alice_ remained in the greatest state of anxiety as to the fate of their comrades who went into the wreck in their little boat, and waited on, and on, in the position in which the boat must come to them, if she clears the Sands; hour after hour she cruises backwards and forwards, her crew keeping most anxious watch, and then runs down the back of the Sands, thinking it possible the boat might get out somewhere there; the gale increases; the night comes on; the high tide has swept over the whole of the Sands with its wild seas long before this, and they can only conclude, which they do most positively and sorrowfully, that their companions in many a hard struggle--their friends since childhood--have been lost, overwhelmed in the rage of the sea on the Goodwin. They therefore give up the search, and now regard their own safety, and they also find that they cannot reach Ramsgate, but must make away for Dover. Arriving there, they at once telegraph the sad news to Ramsgate, that they have lost six hands; news that creates the greatest excitement in the town. The next morning the _Princess Alice_ starts at daylight for another cruise round the Sands, hardly with the hope of finding their lost comrades, but possibly fragments of the boat may be found; but they search in vain, and feeling their fears to be altogether confirmed, they steer for Ramsgate. There the arrival of the lugger is most anxiously awaited, and the report of the men increases the excitement, and sorrow, and sympathy, which had been created by the telegraph sent the night before, and now that the names of the missing men are known, there is sad, sad, grief among their supposed widows, and orphans, and their friends. In the meanwhile the boatmen, having left the American ship, row steadily toward Ramsgate. They see a lugger making for the harbour; this proves to be the _Champion_. The lugger takes the men on board, and the boat in tow, her crew rejoicing over their friends whom they had supposed to be drowned. They hoist the lugger's flag in token that they are bearers of good news, and speed towards Ramsgate. The lugger's approach with her flag flying excites the curiosity of the men on the harbour, and a crowd hurries down the pier to watch her arrival. And, as soon as the men missing from the _Princess Alice_ are recognised, the cheers and excitement are wild in the extreme, and men speed off at their hardest to bear the good news. One poor woman in the midst of her agony and mourning for her husband, and surrounded by her weeping friends, is surprised by her door being burst violently open, and at seeing a boatman almost dropping with breathlessness, gasping, and gesticulating, and nodding, but trying in vain to speak; and it is some seconds before he can stammer out "All right! all right! your husband is safe, coming now!"