We rushed through the village, and up on the heights, where they had planted their apparatus. A little crowd surrounded them. How dismal the sea looked in the struggling moonlight! I felt as if I were wandering in the mazes of an evil dream. But when I approached the cliff, and saw down below the great mass, of the vessel’s hulk, with the waves breaking every moment upon her side, I felt the reality awful indeed. Now and then there would come a kind of lull in the wild sequence of rolling waters, and then I fancied for a moment that I saw how she rocked on the bottom. Her masts had all gone by the board, and a perfect chaos of cordage floated and swung in the waves that broke over her. But her bowsprit remained entire, and shot out into the foamy dark, crowded with human beings. The first rocket had missed. They were preparing to fire another. Roxton stood with his telescope in his hand, ready to watch the result. “This is a terrible job, sir,” he said when I approached him; “I doubt if we shall save one of them.” “There’s the life-boat!” I cried, as a dark spot appeared on the waters approaching the vessel from the other side. “The life-boat!” he returned with contempt. “You don’t mean to say they’ve got _her_ out! She’ll only add to the mischief. We’ll have to save her too.” She was still some way from the vessel, and in comparatively smooth water. But between her and the hull the sea raved in madness; the billows rode over each other, in pursuit, as it seemed, of some invisible prey. Another hiss, as of concentrated hatred, and the second rocket was shooting its parabola through the dusky air. Roxton raised his telescope to his eye the same moment. “Over her starn!” he cried. “There’s a fellow getting down from the cat-head to run aft.--Stop, stop!” he shouted involuntarily. “There’s an awful wave on your quarter.” His voice was swallowed in the roaring of the storm. I fancied I could distinguish a dark something shoot from the bows towards the stern. But the huge wave fell upon the wreck. The same moment Roxton exclaimed--so coolly as to amaze me, forgetting how men must come to regard familiar things without discomposure-- “He’s gone! I said so. The next’ll have better luck, I hope.” That man came ashore alive, though.