At last, the captain feels that the schooner is in great danger, and orders the crew to set a tar-barrel on fire; they hasten to do so--Fullarton working with eager haste; but the wash of the sea over it and the heavy wind will not let it burn; they fill the barrel with tow and tar, and grease, and at last get it to flare up with a fierce flame that resists the storm; the watch on board the Gull light-ship had noticed before dark the danger of the vessel, and had been keenly on the look-out in her direction for signals of distress; on Ramsgate Pier, also, an anxious look-out had been kept for some hours, the boatmen expecting disasters in that quarter. It is a little before four in the morning; the men on board the light-vessel see the signal of distress, and fire a gun and send up a rocket to convey to the shore the tidings that help is wanted. The boatmen at once commence preparations with all energy, they arouse the men asleep in the watch-house on the pier, a man hurries to give the harbour-master notice, the crew of the steamer _Aid_ get ready for sea, the harbour-master hurries down the pier and gives the men orders to start on their merciful and perilous errand. Away they go in the teeth of the hurricane, clearing their way through the leaping foaming waves and the clouds of heavy spray. The town and harbour lights gleam out in the darkness, but there is no looking back for them on the part of the men, and there may be none; until by God's mercy, their work is successfully finished, and then doubly will the lights shine out a glad welcome on their triumphant return home. The lights they now look for are the beacon fires of warfare; calls to conflict and peril; guides into the thickest of the dread battle-field. As the life-boat lifts on the curl of a wave, the crew see the flickering flame of the signal-fire that is burning so fiercely in the tar-barrel on the wreck; they make in for the signal at once, pass through the Cud channel; snow-squalls come sweeping by, adding to the cold and darkness, and shutting out from their view all lights on the Sands; the men are eager and excited in their quick sympathy for the shipwrecked crew--eager to brave all the dangers of the lashing seas which they know must be leaping and tearing about the wreck. And they well realize the deadly peril the poor shipwrecked seamen must be in, and think little in their struggle onward of all the hardships they themselves are enduring.