Raising the night-glasses to his eyes, he concentrated all his powers of vision on the murky gloom in front of him. His glasses roved slowly from side to side, then a point of light, so dim as to be almost imperceptible, swung in the blackness and vanished. For a minute he waited until the light reappeared, then he breathed freely and rang down for the ship to alter course, knowing that he was safe and that he had justified the faith of the passengers who had trusted him to navigate his vessel through the storm. That point of light which meant so much to him was the beam of a lighthouse, one of the many encircling our coast. All round our shores they keep sentinel night after night, through summer calm and winter blizzard, waking to life as daylight fades and dying as dawn steals over the seas. These lights, which the city dweller on a brief visit to the sea watches with such interest, are the friends of all who go down to the sea in ships. Our coasts are profoundly treacherous. Rocks, shoals and quicksands abound everywhere, and are mostly marked with lighthouses, lightships and buoys which in the aggregate have cost millions of pounds. No expense has been spared to indicate these hidden dangers and make our seas safe for shipping. Yet, in spite of all that human foresight can suggest, wrecks still occur. Gales spring up and take their toll; fogs steal on and drive ships blindly to their doom; machinery breaks down and allows the seas to hurl the helpless craft upon the cruel rocks. Probably no coast in the world is so well lighted as that of Great Britain, but although there are over 1700 lights acting as signposts of the sea, warning mariners of their dangers, our rocky shores exact a grievous toll of shipping year by year. It is estimated that the average value of the ships and cargoes lost in British waters amounts to about £5,000,000 annually, so the wealth spilled out of the ships since the galleys of our first invaders found a watery grave would, could it be recovered, considerably lighten the burden of our national debt. Unfortunately the greater part is lost for ever, for the sea which has swallowed the ships destroys them utterly in the course of time, and unless they can be salved within a certain period they soon become not worth salving. The action of the sea water rots away the cargoes, rust gradually devours the steel and iron carcass of the ship, and only those two indestructible substances, gold and silver, the white and red metals for which men have fought and died throughout the ages, remain of the wealth which was originally lost. Men, however, have not been content to see fortunes sink in the sea without making some effort to recover them. They have pitted their wits against the strength of the sea, risked their lives to wrest long-lost treasure from the grasp of the ocean, and the story of their thrilling deeds is one of the outstanding pages of human endeavour.