wrecks, anchors, stumps, and notably the great sternpost of the Terpsichore, from which a few months ago Roberts and the Deal lifeboatmen had rescued all the crew, stick up over the surface. And woe be to the boat or vessel which strikes on these!

On September 12, 1891, on my way to the North Sandhead lightship, which, however, we failed to reach by reason of the strong ebb tide against us and the wind dropping to a calm, we revisited this sternpost of the Terpsichore. We got down mast and sails and took to our oars. The light air from the north-east blew golden feathery cloud-films across the great blue arch above our heads, and for once in the arctic summer of 1891 the air was warm and balmy. Starting from the North-west Goodwin buoy, we soon rowed into shallow water, crossing a long spit of sand on which, not far from us, a feathery breaker raced. Again we get into deep water, having just hit the passage into an amphitheatre in the Goodwins of deep water bordered by a circle or ridge of sand about three feet under water, over which the in-tide was fiercely running and rippling, and upon which here and there a breaker raised its warning crest.

We reached the great sternpost of the lost Terpsichore at 9.22 a.m., just two hours before low water at the neap tides, and found it projected five feet nine inches above the water, which was ten feet six inches deep in the swilly close to it, but nowhere shallower than eight feet within a distance of fifty yards from the stump. Underneath in the green sea-water there lay quite visible the keel and framework of the vessel; and again I heard the story from Roberts, the coxswain of the Deal lifeboat, who was with me, of the rescue of the crew of this very vessel at 2.15 a.m. on the stormy night of the preceding November 14.

As we held by the green sea-washed stump, it was hard to realise the sublime story of that awful night: the mighty sea warring with the furious wind, and the dismantled, beaten ship—masts gone overboard and tossing in mad confusion of spars and cordage along her side—into which most black and furious hell the lifeboatmen dared to venture the Deal lifeboat, and out of which she and her gallant crew came, by God's mercy, triumphant and unscathed, having saved every soul on board, and also, with a fine touch of humanity often to be found in a brave sailor's heart, the 'harmless, necessary cat' belonging to the vessel. I can assure my readers that poor pussy's head and green eyes peering out of the arms of one of the storm-battered sailors as they struggled up Deal beach was a beautiful and most touching sight.

Having lingered and examined this wreck as long as we dared, we now tried to get out of the great circle in which we were enclosed. With one man in the bows and another steering, we tried to cross the submerged ridge of sand which encircled us and over which the tide raced; but we struck the sand, and then were turned broadside on by the furious current and swept back into the circle. Cautiously we rowed along, when, not twenty yards off, I saw an object triangular and not unlike a shark's fin just above the water. 'Hard-a-starboard!' at the same moment cried the man in the bows, and then in the same breath, 'Port, sir, quick! Hard-a-port!' For to right of us stuck up out of eight feet of water, beautifully clear and green, the iron pump-work of a submerged wreck, the iron projection being not more than six inches out of water; and then, a few yards further on to the left of the boat, out of deep water, a rib, it may be, of the same forgotten and it may be long-buried vessel.

Had not the water been calm and clear, the place would have been a regular death-trap. With increased caution we felt our way all round the great circle into which we had entered. South of us rose a smooth yellow-brown bank of sand, and upon this sunny shore tripped hundreds of great white seagulls. So warm, so silent, so lonely was the place that it might have been an island in the Pacific; and upon the same yellow sandbank there basked, quite within view, a great, large-eyed seal.

At last we found our way out of the heart of the Goodwins, and got into the deep, wide swatchway called the Ramsgate Man's Bight. Away to the north-east we saw the Whistle buoy, and toward the east the East buoy, both of which mark the outer edge of the Goodwins.

In the deep centre of this swatch rolled the mast of another wreck, somehow fast to the bottom, and having gazed at this weird sight, we landed, amidst the wild screams of protesting sea-birds, and explored all round for a mile the edges of this sandbank, which was of singular firmness and yellowness, and upon which, in rhythmic cadence, plashed a most pellucid sea.

With change of tide and rising water we got up sail and at last reached the Gull lightship, on whose deck we met old friends, and where we had Divine Service as the evening fell in. Need it be said that that which we had just seen on the Goodwins, the memories of the lost ships, and of the gallant seamen who lie buried there, served to point a moral and to raise all our hearts to that good land where 'there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.' One of the hymns in that service was suggested by the scene we had left, and began thus,

Jesus! Saviour! Pilot me.

But not every boat that visits the mysterious quicksand escapes as readily. Skilled and hardy boatmen are sometimes lost even in fine weather.

About twenty years ago a Deal galley punt, and four men, Bowbyas, Buttress, Erridge, and Obree, skilled Deal boatmen, landed on the Goodwins to get some coal from a wrecked collier. All that is certainly known is that they never returned, and that they had been noticed by a passing barge running to and fro and waving, which the bargemen thought, alas! was only the play of some holiday-keepers on an excursion to the Goodwins. They went to the Goodwins in a light south-west breeze and smooth sea. While there the wind shifted to north-east and a tumble of a sea got up, and it is supposed that it then beat into and filled their laden boat, despite the efforts which they are believed to have made to float her or get her ride to her anchor and come head to wind. If this be so, how long and desperate must their struggle have been to save their boat from wreckage, and to pump out the water and heave out the coal. Their anchor and cable, found on the sands and let go to full scope, favours this idea.

On the other hand, the fact that they were seen wildly running to and fro looks as if some sudden catastrophe had occurred, as if they had struck on some stump in the water close to the very edge of the Goodwins.

The very day on which the photographs were taken which have been used to illustrate this chapter, we were shoving off the steep northern face of the Goodwin Sands, when we saw, not ten yards from the precipitous edge of the dull red sands, in about twenty-five feet of water, and just awash or level with the surface, the bristling spars and masts of a three-masted schooner, the Crocodile, which had been lost there January 6, 1891, in a fearful snowstorm, from the north-east, of that long winter. Had we even touched those deadly points, we too should have probably lost our boat and been entrapped on the Goodwin Sands. The coxswain of the Deal lifeboat was with us, and told how that at three o'clock on that terrible January morning, or rather night, wearied with previous efforts, he had launched the lifeboat and beat in the face of the storm and intense cold ten miles to windward, toward the burning flares which told of a vessel on the Sands.

Just when within reach of the vessel, this very wreck, they saw the Ramsgate tug and lifeboat were just before them, and taking the crew out of the rigging of the wreck. In sight of the whole company, for their lanterns and lights were burning, the poor exhausted captain of the schooner, in trying to get down from the rigging, in which he was almost frozen to death, fell