All the time the crew of the foundered ship, cut off from all communication with the shore, were fighting their hopeless battle for life, looking to the land they could not reach, and praying for the aid which could not come. And then,-then, when all hope of going to the rescue seemed abandoned-out spoke some hero of the life-boat council on the Whitby beach, and said, "We will take her overland. "They would take the life-boat overland! Do you realize the magnitude of the task? The heroic audacity of the idea? Between Whitby and Robin Hood"s Bay there are six long milesof hilly country. A life-boat is a huge and ponderous vessel. Aterrific storm was raging. There was a hard frost, and the roadswere deep with snow.
On the face of it, the project looked like madness. But there was a boat"s crew of sailors hoping against hope among the breakers; and British fishermen, having made up their minds to do a thing, bring desperate courage to face desperate emergencies.
The men of Whitby would take their life-boat overland ! The rumour spread. The crowd increased. The enthusiasm began to blaze. Old men, women, and children-the fathers, mothers, wives, daughters, and sons of fishermen-came out into the storm. The coxswain led the way to the boat-house, which was waist-deep in water, and the approach to which was swept every minute by the furious charges of the seas that rushed up the slips and over the pier.
It was all a noble sight ! The boat was dragged out. Ropes were made fast to it. A hundred, two hundred, three hundred men seized the ropes; a great crowd followed, pushing the carriage or turning the wheels. Through the falling snow and crackling ice, the flying spume and spray, the life-boat was dragged down the quaint old street and over the narrow, steep bridge.
At the turn of the road, a couple of horses were yoked on; a few yards up the hill, a couple more; a few yards farther, a couple more; and so, as the procession went, were men and horses added to win the way against wind and weather.
One mile out a couple of travellers met the party, vowed theenterprise was hopeless, told how the roads were one mass of ice and snow, how they themselves had left their traps and horses half buried in the drifts. To get to the bay, they said, was quite impossible.
Impossible! Whitby was aroused. Whitby had its blood up, the blood of the Vikings, who feared not steel, or storm, or fire! Impossible ! Whitby laughed !
Ahoy, there! A score of men! Two, three score of men, and quickly, with axes and bars and shovels. We will see about this snow, we men of Whitby; we will go, though the skies should fall.
The men were there-a hundred men with spades and axes; a hundred more with ropes and lanterns. They hewed the ice and cut the snow from the track; they grew more fierce and resolute the sterner grew the obstacles.
At every hamlet, at every farm and cross-road, they picked up volunteers. Farmers and carriers met them with their cattle. Soon they had thirty horses, and of men a regiment. They dragged the great boat by main force up the steep hills, and through the ruts and puddles. They tracked their way through drifts and hedges; they pulled up gates and broke down walls, and so, panting, straining, heaving like giants, they hauled the life-boat into the crowd at the top of the winding and abrupt declivity which leads to the beach of the bay.
Howl, winds; rage, hungry waves, around the fainting seamen in their broken boat! The Vikings are upon you, themen who brought the life-boat overland.
"Saved, saved to a man."
The steep road down to the shore is a mass of ice; the horses cannot stand upon it; the seas break fiercely over the wall. The men of Robin Hood"s Bay come forward. They lash the hind wheels of the carriage. They seize the ropes, the boat, the wheels, the sides- nine hundred lusty men-and they dash the thing down to the water with one mighty rush.
Then no time is lost. Swiftly the men of the crew are dressed, the boat is launched, and with a lurch and a plunge it leaps bodily into the storm.
But the fight is not yet over. The sea is tremendous; the coast is a mass of hidden reefs; and in a few minutes the life- boat is hurled back, beaten, to the shore, with all the oars on one side broken, and half the crew exhausted or disabled.
It is three hours now since the men of Whitby formed their grand and daring resolution. All that time the crew of thesunken vessel have been holding on in hopeless desperation,knowing nothing of the efforts made on their behalf; hearing nothing but the shriek of the tempest and the thunder of the waves; seeing nothing but the vast, dark hill-sides of water, the misty loom of the land, and the baffling veil of eddying snow- flakes, whirling, whirling.
Eight men of the life-boat"s crew are out of action; eight volunteers take their places. Eight oars are shattered; eight more are shipped from the damaged boat belonging to the bay. A pilot also, a fisherman of the village, goes aboard, and again the boat is rushed into the billows.
Rescue or death these men will win. The boat must go, shall go; the blood of the Vikings is on fire; they would in their present temper fetch their comrades ashore though hell itself should gape.
Out again into the mirk and fury. Out in the boat they have carried overland. Out under the eyes of all the gallant men and brave women of the village. Out in the teeth of the tempest, into the roaring, rolling, black-green valleys of the shadow of death. Now rising on the crest of some huge roller, now hidden from sight in some fearful, hissing pit, now hurled upon its beam ends by the sudden impact of a heavy sea, the Whitby boat fights its way towards the men who shall be rescued.
Not till the life-boat is close upon them have those desperate, clinging wretches any knowledge of the succour so heroically brought. Fainting with fatigue, perishing with cold, still they hold on-stubborn, but hopeless. They cannot see the life-boat,they cannot see the shore.