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When the Spaniards came down from their drinking, a fight ensued, the two parties churning up the sand, and driving each other into the surf.
Upon this the pinnace and yawl were sent out to bring off some of these animals, and returned with sufficient fish to serve the whole company for a day, but had been unable to land for turtle, in consequence of a prodigious surf on the shore. This island was a mere rock in lat. 0° 9' N. and the ground all about it was foul, with soundings from fifty to eighty fathoms.
Yet there is a wonderful snake-like grace in the lithe, swift motions of the animal when he is in the surf. You forget the savage blood-shot eyes, the receding forehead, the clumsy figure and awkward motion, as he wriggles up the steep rocks, the moment you see him at his superb sport in the breakers. It seemed to me that he was another creature.
As we hove-to and dropped anchor, a boat was pushed out into the surf by a man who had hurriedly come down the beach from the house. In a moment or two he was alongside. An English face and an English voice greeted us, and in the doorway of the house were an English woman and her child.
On the Commander Group, otter hunters are now restricted to the use of the net alone, but formerly the nature of the hunting was determined entirely by the weather. If a tide ran with heavy surf and wind landward to conceal sound and sight, the hunters lined alongshore of the kelp beds and engaged in the hunt known as surf-shooting. Their rifles would carry a thousand yards.
Then the lifeboat was in the surf again, her crew laboring like the sons of Hercules they were to keep her head to the wind and to the breakers. The storekeeper was no weakling; rowing was an accomplishment he had excelled in from childhood. It was the single activity in any way connected with the sea that he had learned and maintained. At first he kept his eyes shut tight shut.
When he reached the parking area at The Devil's Churn, he opened the Laphroiag and took two long swallows. He put the bottle on the front seat and got out of the Jeep. The sun was setting behind a layer of low dark clouds. Oliver walked slowly down the wooden steps slippery from spray at the bottom. The surf was high. Waves exploded up the fissure in the rocks, roaring and seething.
Only the noise of the light surf disturbed the intense stillness, and that had a soothing, musical quality that made it far from a disturbance to those who slept. But that peace was to be rudely shattered before the first watch was over.
It swept across the island, levelled forests of cocoa palms, battered villages to pieces, caught that little fleet in the harbour, and played with it in a horrible madness. To right and left were reefs, behind was the shore, with a monstrous surf rolling in; before was a narrow passage. One vessel made its way out on it was the officer who had surveyed the harbour.
On it went grinding and rattling like all the round pebbles in the world rolling on a beach with a tidy surf on. I tumbled at last. 'Remember that thing with the two rockers we saw at the Hermit's Hut in the Hollow? I said to Jim. 'We couldn't make out what it was. I know now; it was a gold cradle, and there's hundreds and thousands rocking there at the Turon. That's what's the matter.
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