“Then we give the ship a line:  the ball is fired from this mortar, the line being fastened to the shot by a spiral wire.  Mortar, powder and matches are set, you see, ready for instantaneous use.  The ball must be shot so that the line falls over the ship.  Not an easy mark to hit in the night and the storm driving.  Sometimes it is not done until after many trials:  sometimes, as in the case of the Giovanni, it cannot be reached at all.  I saw the Argyle go down eight years ago with all on board, after we had tried all night to reach her.  One man was washed ashore, and we made a rope of hands out beyond the first breaker, and so got him in.”

“The men farthest out on the line had not much better chance than he?”

“No, but the man had to be got in,” carelessly.  “I was going to say that as soon as the line does fall over the ship it is hauled aboard.  There is a hauling-line fastened to it, and a hawser to the hauling-line.  Here they all are in order.  When the hawser reaches the ship it is made taut and secured to the mizzentop or mainmast, high enough to swing clear of the taffrail.  It is fastened on shore by this sand-anchor.  Then we send over the breeches-buoy,” pointing to a complete suit of india-rubber very similar in appearance to that used by Paul Boyton.  “One man can be sent safely to shore in that.  But we use the life-car most frequently.”

“A boat?”

“You may call it a covered boat if you will.  That life-car, sir, was invented by Captain Douglass Ottinger, and this is the first one ever used.  It was sent out to the ship Ayrshire, and more than two hundred souls were saved by it when there was no other way of giving them human help.  There she is, sir.”  He laid his hand with a good deal of feeling on the queer shell that hung from the ceiling.

The Ottinger life-car, the patent for which the generous inventor gave to the; public, is simply an egg-shaped case with bands of cork about it.  Along the top are iron rings through which it is slung on the hawser.  The car is drawn by another line from the shore to the vessel.  It opens by means of a door or lid two feet square on top.  Eleven passengers can be crowded inside.  The lid is then screwed down and the car drawn ashore.

“Eleven!” cried one of the party.  “It would not hold four comfortably.”

“Men in that extremity are not apt to stand on the order of their going,” said another.

“Nor women, neither,” added the captain; “though women always do cry out to go in the open boat rather than the car, though there isn’t half the chance for them.”

“How is it ventilated?”

“Ventilated?  Lord bless you!  What would be the good of it if it wasn’t air-tight?  It’s under the water all the time, upside down, over and over a hundred times.  There’s air in it enough to last ’em for three minutes, and it’s calculated that it can be brought ashore in less time.  I’ve seen husbands put their wives into it, and mothers their little babies—­them standing on deck, never hoping to live to see them again.”