up against the wind, battling with it to fling lines in the vain hope of saving some sailor who was being churned to death in that dreadful creaming of the sea below.  Yes, and there were forms of men visible on board; two had climbed the mainmast, which crashed before they could clutch at the ropes that were being flung to them from land, crashed and carried them down shrieking into the surge.  Mark found it hard to believe that last summer he had spent many sunlit hours dabbling in the sand for silver dollars of Portugal lost perhaps on such a night as this a hundred years ago, exactly where these two poor mariners were lost.  A few minutes after the mainmast the hull went also; but in the nebulous moonlight nothing could be seen of any bodies alive or dead, nothing except wreckage tossing upon the surge.  The watchers on the cliff turned away from the wind to gather new breath and give their cheeks a rest from the stinging fragments of rock and earth.  Away up over the towans they could see the bobbing lanthorns of men hurrying down from Chypie where news of the wreck had reached; and on the road from Lanyon they could see lanthorns on the other side of Church Cove waiting until the tide had ebbed far enough to let them cross the beach.

Suddenly the Vicar shouted: 

“I can see a poor fellow hanging on to a ledge of rock.  Bring a rope!  Bring a rope!”

Eddowes the coastguard took charge of the operation, and Mark with beating pulses watched the end of the rope touch the huddled form below.  But either from exhaustion or because he feared to let go of the slippery ledge for one moment the sailor made no attempt to grasp the rope.  The men above shouted to him, begged him to make an effort; but he remained there inert.

“Somebody must go down with the rope and get a slip knot under his arms,” the Vicar shouted.

Nobody seemed to pay attention to this proposal, and Mark wondered if he was the only one who had heard it.  However, when the Vicar repeated his suggestion, Eddowes came forward, knelt down by the edge of the cliff, shook himself like a bather who is going to plunge into what he knows will be very cold water, and then vanished down the rope.  Everybody crawled on hand and knees to see what would happen.  Mark prayed that Eddowes, who was a great friend of his, would not come to any harm, but that he would rescue the sailor and be given the Albert medal for saving life.  It was Eddowes who had made him medal wise.  The coastguard struggled to slip the loop under the man’s shoulders along his legs; but it must have been impossible, for presently he made a signal to be raised.

“I can’t do it alone,” he shouted.  “He’s got a hold like a limpet.”

Nobody seemed anxious to suppose that the addition of another rescuer would be any more successful.

“If there was two of us,” Eddowes went on, “we might do something.”

The people on the cliff shook their heads doubtfully.