all this the face of one woman who stood looking at the men arrested my
attention. It was very white, and her eyes had a look in them that I
cannot describe, though I have seen it since in my sleep. The men in the
boat were her husband and her sons. She said nothing, but kept her hands
tightly clasped; and her lips parted every time the boat rose on the
crown of a wave. We could not see those good fellows half the time: all
we could tell was that the man who was sitting against the jacket had to
bale very hard. Presently the deep bow of the boat rose over a
travelling sea, and she ground on the sand. She was heavily laden with
the brig's crew of limp and shivering Danish seamen. And it was not a
moment too soon for her to be ashore: the brig parted almost directly,
and the wreckage was strewn all along the beach.

The men who did this action never had any reward. And it did not matter;
for they took a very moderate view of their own merits. They knew, of
course, that they had done a good morning's work; but it never occurred
to them that they ought to have a paragraph in the newspapers and be
called brave. The sort of courage they exhibited they would have
described, if their attention had been called to it, as "only natural."
The old hero who went through a heavy sea with a staved-in boat is still
living. His name is Big Tom, and his home is at Cresswell, in the county
of Northumberland. He does not know that he is at all heroic; but it is
pleasant to think of him after reading about those wretched
excursionists who drowned each other in sheer fright within sight of his
home. He has often saved life since then. But when he puts out to sea
now he does not need to use a stove-in coble: he is captain of the
smart lifeboat; and his proudest possession is a photograph which shows
his noble figure standing at the bow.