We were not above a mile from shore: Clifton however agreed to their extravagant demand, and we went into the boat.
We had not been there many minutes before we perceived that the five boatmen, who managed it, were all in liquor, especially he who seemed to be their head man; and that we were much more at the mercy of winds and waves, in our present than in our former situation. Clifton and Frank endeavoured to make them attentive, by reproving them; and probably did some good; though the answers they received, in the rugged vulgar idiom of the sea, were not very conciliatory. We were much tossed by the roughness of the water, but made however toward the shore, though evidently in an awkward and dangerous way.
Most part of the beach, at Deal, is excessively steep; and, when the weather is stormy, the waves break against it very abruptly, and dangerously to boats which are managed by men that are either ignorant or have drunken away their senses. When the boat approached the beach, the man at the helm, being stupid and it being dark, did not do his duty, and the side of the boat was dashed against the beach. The shock almost overset the boat, and it was half filled by the wave which broke over it. The water is always a fickle and perilous element; but in an agitated sea, when the winds howl and the waves roar, foam, dash, retreat, and return with additional threats and raging, it is then truly terrific! I shall never forget that night! I think on it even now with horror! One of those poor drunken creatures, Louisa, was in an instant washed overboard and lost; almost without a cry; not heard, not aided, scarcely remarked; no attempt made to save him, for all attempt was absolutely impossible: we were within a few yards of land, yet were ourselves almost certain of perishing. The remaining men were little better than helpless; for it was the most active of them who was thus miserably drowned!--Indeed, Louisa, it was dreadful!
The reflux of the water was in half a minute likely to be equally violent. Frank, whose presence of mind never forsakes him, saw what the nature of our danger was; and, shaking off poor Laura, who clung round him, begging of him for God's sake to save her precious life, he flew to the helm, turned the head of the boat in its proper direction, and called with that imperious kind of voice which on such occasions enforces obedience, for somebody to come to the helm. Clifton was there in an instant. Keep it, said Frank, in this position.