vessels passed the Sands, but not near enough to be able to make out the men in the rigging of the masts, which were only just above water; the weather grew worse and worse, the day was wearing away, and the night coming on; it was all very, very hopeless. At last a brig passed nearer to them than any other vessels had come; the mate said, "If they are looking at the wreck with a good glass, they may, perhaps, see us," and he stood up and waved to them. At that moment, most providentially, the pilot on board the vessel looked at the wreck through a glass, and saw the mate waving his south-wester cap. The brig soon after spoke a smack that was making in for the land, and the smack proceeded to Broadstairs and reported a wreck on the Kentish Knock, with the crew in the rigging, and that a life-boat was wanted for their rescue, for that no ordinary boat could live through the sea that was running over the Sands. At Broadstairs they felt that their own boat could never get there in time without the assistance of a steamer, and they telegraphed to Ramsgate. It was about six o'clock in the evening, the steamer _Aid_, with Reading in command, and the life-boat _Bradford_, with Fish as coxswain, and R. Goldsmith as second coxswain, at once made their way out into the gale and tremendous sea to the rescue of the shipwrecked crew. In the meantime the poor fellows on board the wreck waited on almost in despair, the ship each moment yielding to the force of the storm till the whole deck was washed away, and the masts were working more and more loose; happily she had wire rigging, which stood the heavy swaying and lurching of the masts better than the ordinary rope rigging would have done. It was piteous in talking to the men to hear them describe the condition of utter despair that they were in, and how little ground they could find for any hope whatever; piteous to hear the captain say, "There were just two planks of the deck left floating entangled in a rope, and I kept watching them, thinking that if the mast went I would try and swim to them, and float on them for the chance of being picked up by some vessel;" to hear the mate answer, "But I was just watching them too, with the same idea;" and the carpenter adds, "That was just the plan I had in my mind." And thus the ten men clung to the rigging and to each other, standing on the small crosstrees of one tottering mast, hour after hour. The day passed, still no signs of rescue; it became quite dark; it seemed impossible that they could ever see another day's dawn.