Ah! gentlemen of the Spiers & Pond and money-making world, isn't it a brave picture to think of? The cooling dash of ocean spray is delightfully refreshing. To think that our race can still breed heroes; that even we, if we could or would but shake off the Old Man of the Earth that sits upon our shoulders, might perhaps be heroes too; that we too might risk our lives to snatch storm-tossed unfortunates from the clutch of death--is it not a blessed thought?
It is the custom of our age to boast of its civilisation. When we stand erect we fear to hurtle the stars with our foreheads as we pass under. We smile upon our accumulations of wealth and the monuments of our commerce, and esteem ourselves the crowning triumphs of evolution, the ultimate perfection, Nature's finished masterpieces. But how small, how mean, and how insignificant we Londoners look by the side of these stalwart and fearless fishermen of Suffolk and Norfolk.
They know nothing of Westralians, S. P. prices, futures, or the Sisters Bobalink's new dance; but what a lot they have to teach us!
The weather changes swiftly at Gorleston, and when the white foam-horses ride over the hidden sand-banks, even a Cockney-tripper may feel the sense of peril.
Ever since we came we have seen the gaunt masts of one wreck spectrally haunting our feast from behind the lightship in the east. Now there is another on a sand-bank close to shore, a little to the north of the river's mouth.
It had been a glorious day, but towards evening the storm-clouds gathered and the wind rose in fitful gusts. A Baltic steamer, clearing out of the harbour at dusk, blocked up the mouth of the river for some hours owing to a fouled anchor, till at last, her cable being cut, she succeeded in getting to sea.
Meantime, a Yarmouth trawler, returning to port with a week's catch of fish, was misled by the lights of the disabled vessel, and, manoeuvring to get clear, backed on to the dangerous North Sand, whose floor is thickly strewed with remains of former wrecks.
From the pier, through the blackening night, we watched the crew's futile efforts to get off again. It was very like a fly's efforts to escape from a spider's web, and evidently as profitless. The more they struggled, the deeper in the sand they sank.