8% ALL ABOARD FOR SUNRISE LANDS.

sea. You know when folks are mad, they sometimes grow white in
the face, and that is the way it was with that sea, white in its
anger. Nothin’ but bilin’ foam between us and the shore, a kind
of immense snow-drift all broken up into feathery flakes and flyin’
toward the shore! I don’t know but what the light we did have
came more from that big batch of foam than from the day itself,
for the sky in the east was black as if in mournin’. We were
in a bad fix. We had been cuttin’ away the mainmast and the
mizzen mast, and in fallin’ they took away part of the foremast.
We looked ragged enough, and how the seas did sweep that deck!
What was to be done? No boat could live a minute in that sea,
and what headway could a swimmer make? Now when I was in
the river, that time I told you about, I felt tol’ably easy for I
could keep a-goin’ till help came, but in this sea it seemed as it
the billers would chop a feller up less than no time. All at once,
something bright went over our heads! It was a rocket! Guns!
we couldn’t hear it whizz, but we could see its trail and that was
jest as comfortin’, and it went like a comit through the air! I
have seen fireworks, but never did I see any that did me so much
good. That rocket, you see, came from some people on the shore,
high up on the rocks, and at last we could
make out two men. Then by-and-by, there
were more. Another rocket came, and this
time it fetched a rope that fell right across
our ship. We knew what it meant. Finally
there came a life-basket. This is suspended
from a rope that goes from the ship to the
shore, and slides along this rope, so that it can
be filled at the ship and then pulled ashore.
It is sometimes very difficult to reach a wreck with a life-boat, and