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Then you can imagine the times that he had with his companions, ducking under the rollers; or coming in on top of a comber and landing with a swash and a splutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or standing up on his tail and scratching his head as the old people did; or playing "I'm the King of the Castle" on slippery, weedy rocks that just stuck out of the wash.
Michael was an even more vexatious case, and in moments of depression his father thought that he would really turn in his grave at the dismal idea of Michael having stepped into his honourable shoes. Physically he was utterly unlike a Comber, and his mind, his general attitude towards life seemed to have diverged even farther from that healthy and unreflective pattern.
I read on, oblivious of hunger or wind or sea, thinking that all was going well, when suddenly a comber rolled over the stern and slopped saucily into the cabin, wetting the very book I was reading. Evidently it was time to put in a reef, that she might not wallow on her course. March 31 the fresh southeast wind had come to stay.
She, according to her custom, was drinking a little hot water herself, and providing her Chinese pug with a mixture of cream and crumbled rusks. Though the dog was of undoubtedly high lineage, Lord Ashbridge rather detested her. "A musical career!" he exclaimed, referring to Michael's letter. "What sort of a career for a Comber is a musical career?
'We three will go and look for game, he said, 'and you, Tree Comber, will stay behind and prepare a good supper for us. So Tree Comber set to work to boil and roast, and when dinner was nearly ready, a little dwarf with a pointed beard strolled up to the place. 'What are you cooking? asked he, 'give me some of it. 'I'll give you some on your back, if you like, answered Tree Comber rudely.
Peter was driving ashore like a hurricane ship, and rushed full force, nine feet deep with her prow into the sands not a pistol shot away from the crew. The next beach comber could not budge her. Wind and tide left her high and dry, fast in the sand. But what had become of Chirikoff, on board the St. Paul, from the 20th of June, when the vessels were separated by storm?
But there was wind loose somewhere on the Gulf. The glass was falling. The swells broke more heavily along the cliffs. At the mouth of the Cove white sheets of spray lifted as each comber reared and broke in that narrow place. He recollected that he had left the Blanco's dinghy hauled up on the beach on the tip of Point Old. He got ashore now in the green dugout and walked across to the Point.
Once more it was flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, thrusting it forth again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing frames. Six of these gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six.
Her progress was obvious. One felt the headlong rush, and Lister thought about a toboggan speeding down an icy slope. The roller would bear her on until it broke, but if she struck the sand she might not lift again. She did not strike; there was another wild leap forward, a savage plunge, and a comber crashed astern.
As his fingers touched it a comber flung itself up out of the black and shot two feet of foam and green water across the swamped hull. It picked up the light cedar skiff like a chip and cast it beyond his reach and beyond his sight. And as he clung to the cabin pipe-rail, drenched with the cold sea, he heard that big roller burst against the shore very near at hand.
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