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It was only as she sank into the water, in stemming a swell, that anything like foam could be seen under her forefoot. A long line of swift-receding bubbles, however, marked her track, and she no sooner came abreast of any given group of spectators than she was past it resembling the progress of a porpoise as he sports along a harbor.
Then her easy motion changed to a drunken lurch and Jake gazed with misgivings at the white-topped seas ahead. She went through the first comber's crest with her forefoot in the air and the foam washing deep along the tilted deck, while the counter vanished in a white upheaval. Then it swung up in turn, and frames and planking shook as the engine ran away.
Roger fervently prayed that this operation of transfer might be completed ere the storm burst upon them; but he was very doubtful, for that fatal white line of foam was driving down upon the fleet with appalling rapidity. But he could not relax his attention from the matter that he himself had in hand.
Again she had been blindfolded; seeing the look in Trevors's eyes, she had offered no objection. Again she had followed him in a darkness made at sunrise by a bandage across her eyes. Again, the bandage removed, she winked at the sunlight. Again they climbed ridges, dropped down into tiny valleys, fought their way along thunderous ravines where the water was lashed into white foam.
Nor is the huge brute one moment still; his fore-feet are pawing and tearing at the ground; his head is turned first in one direction and then in another; his whole body is quivering and shaking; foam flies from his grinding jaws; while his continued snorting, with its roaring, bellowing, and shrieking intonations, is horrible to hear.
But, hurrying forward again, he came to a turnpike road, and then knew that, all comely and shaven as it was, this was simply the open country of England; one bright, broad park, paled in with white foam of the sea. A copse skirting the road was just bursting out into bud. Each unrolling leaf was in very act of escaping from its prison.
The worst fall the next day was a drop of about twenty feet in twenty yards; a sharp plunge of the river in one mass. As it seemed free from rocks in the middle a run was decided on. We therefore pulled squarely into it. On both sides the river was beaten to solid foam amongst the rocks, but in the middle, where we were, there was a clean chute, followed by a long tail of ugly waves.
To their left a wall of foam and spray shut off all view of the sea. On the right the cliff rose, a vast barrier, and cut the sky in two. These two men had nothing in common. They had, indeed, standing between them that sword which was brought into the world nineteen hundred years ago, and is still unsheathed. But neither thought of turning back.
Then the Reserve-man turned, facing aft. "Let her go, George," he said, raising his voice. The trawler fussed ahead like a self-important hen that has laid an egg. There was a violent upheaval in the water astern, and a column of foam and wreckage leaped into the air with a deafening roar.
Then the seal rushed straight into the sea, leaving a track of blood-tinged foam behind it. Elias saw nothing more of it; but the same afternoon the halibut pike, with the iron point broken off, was washed up at the landing-stage in Kval creek where the house stood. Elias thought no more of the affair.
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