Yes, my readers, I would once again carry you in thought far away from quiet home scenes and peaceful associations, from the pleasant nooks and sunny corners of memories which you delight to recall, upon which you love to let your thoughts half consciously ponder; but I ask you to take the joy of your home peace--the gladness of your blessings--with you, that you may be quickened in every chord of sympathy as you let me draw your thoughts away into the dread darkness, which is only broken by spectral sheens of light shed by flying foam, there to picture the rolling sea-mountains hurling along their avalanches of white spray; to listen to the dread discords of a howling tempest; to hover in fancy mid a scene of fierce turmoil and strife, where the elements in their rage seem to have cast off all bonds to their fury, and to have determined to sweep from their path every vestige of man and his works; and now to let your eyes centre upon a shattered wreck, to which are clinging a few storm-beaten sailors trembling upon the very verge of a grave. Are you practically interested in life-boat work, then you have a message to them in their hour of agony; you would have a message to many a loving wife and innocent child if they could now realize the danger of those they love, upon whom they depend. And your whisper is of rescue and of hope. Look where a fitful light gleams in the darkness; now rides high on the crest of a huge wave, now falls buried in the trough of the sea, shines out again, is hidden in a cloud of spray, but pressing on and on, getting nearer each moment to the shipwrecked. The light gleams from a life-boat in which a small band of men are battling,--battling on in the teeth of the fierce storm. No terrors stay them, no failures quell their courage and their zeal; are not fellow-men held captive and threatened with death by fierce and cruel seas? and shall they, the Storm Warriors, not be ready at every peril, and at every hardship, and against all difficulties to make in to their rescue. In such scenes we see the men actually at their work in their efforts to save life and property; but the life-boat work does not merely consist in doing the work at the moment of its necessity, but also in the unwearying watch and readiness for when that time of emergency shall come. Many a Ramsgate boatman leaves his poor, but warm and comfortable home, his humble and loving home circle, to pace Ramsgate pier for hours, and this, night after night, for many winter months, and for the mere chance of being among the first to make a rush for the life-boat when the signal is given to man her,--a chance that may not come a dozen times in the season, and which, when it does come, may afford indeed a grand opportunity for daring all and doing all for the saving of life, but not for doing much in the way of refilling the half-empty cupboards at home, or rubbing off the debts that have been gradually growing during the winter season.