It was in the false dawn—that lighting of the sky before the sun really illumines the horizon—that a hail reached the dulled ears of the watchers lashed to the rigging of the _Nelly G_. As she was pitched so far to port that their bodies overhung the leaping, foam-streaked waves, they could not see over the starboard rail of the wreck. And to their amazement the hail came from this seaward direction. Ralph Endicott, as agile as any of the crew and much quicker than the skipper, who was no longer young, slipped out of his lashings and worked his way swiftly down the stays to the rail. Within a biscuit-toss of the wreck lay a big motor lifeboat, her belted crew with their faces lifted to him. "Ahoy, the schooner!" bawled again a hoarse voice. "Don’t you fellers want to be taken off, or do ye cal’late on stayin’ till she breaks up into kindling wood?" For an instant Ralph could not speak. If he had not been panic-stricken, he certainly was anxious. And here was unexpected rescue at hand! "Cap’n Pritchett! Come down! Here’s visitors!" he finally bawled. Another of the party had swarmed down to the rail. He raised a stentorian bellow: "Hey! Here’s the Upper Trillion crew. I would know Cap’n Boggs in a Georges’s snow-squall. Come on, boys! We’d better go to breakfast with them, hey?" There was sudden and great hilarity. These brave fellows were used to facing danger in many forms, and the unexpected chance for escape from the wreck quickly assuaged their gloom. The debarkation from the wreck was not so simple a matter. Already the crew of the schooner had each a lifebelt strapped upon his body. Now a sling was arranged with a whipline attached thereto, and this last flung to willing hands in the lifeboat. With her propeller holding her steady against the force of the inrolling waves, the lifeboat was backed as near the wreck as was judged safe. One after another the wrecked crew entered the sling and the life savers drew them over to the motor craft while their mates aboard the wreck payed out the line. More than one of the passengers in this rude contrivance was submerged in the leaping, hungry waves; but there were no serious casualties until the end. Ralph Endicott was one of the last to go, and Captain Pritchett himself aided the young man. The captain insisted upon remaining till the last. There was nobody to aid him in leaving the wreck. With a line about his waist Captain Pritchett leaped into a receding wave and was hauled into the lifeboat unconscious and with a broken arm. Fourteen men, including the skipper and the cook, were thus rescued. It was an event of greater peril than can easily be imagined. Nor was all danger over when the full tally of the schooner’s company was in the motor-boat.