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"It blew hard that night," he added. "Somehow she lived through it, but there wasn't a sign of the island when morning came. Nothing but the combers and the flying haze. Guess the wind must have shifted a few points and drove us by the end of it. Then we found Jake had his head laid open by a sealing club.
The serene immensity of the sky, the warmth and dryness of the boat's timbers, the deep and translucent waters, and the coast so low and indistinct that the silent flashing of the combers there might have been on nothing substantial, were all timeless, and could have been but a thought and a desire; they were like a memorable morning in a Floridan cay miraculously returned.
In a few minutes more of practice I was able to thread my way in and out past several bathers and to remain on top my breaker instead of going under it. "To-morrow," Ford said, "I am going to take you out into the blue water." I looked seaward where he pointed, and saw the great smoking combers that made the breakers I had been riding look like ripples.
He wondered whether they could keep the water out of the engine-room. They had drifted off-shore, and now they had opened up the channel the combers leaped on board. The seas were not regular; they ran in short, steep ridges, and gave the tug no time to lift. While she swung her bows from the foaming turmoil the next swept her deck.
The sea lay sparkling in the sunlight, while almost at their feet great white-crested combers were rolling in and breaking against the sandy bluff. The salt spray dashed up into their faces and the odor of the salt sea was strong in their nostrils. "Isn't this glorious?" cried Harriet, with enthusiasm.
Heading north, month after month, the Golden Hind sailed for the shore that should have led northeast, and that puzzled the mariners by sheering west and yet west; fourteen hundred leagues she sailed along a leafy wilderness of tangled trees and ropy mosses, beauty and decay, the froth of the beach combers aripple on the very roots of the trees; dolphins coursing round the hull like greyhounds; flying fish with mica for wings flitting over the decks; forests of seaweed warning out to deeper water.
I had been some months on shore when I began to get tired of looking at green fields and grass combers, and longed to be once more on the salt seas. My family had increased to seven boys and girls, and I thought it criminal to be longer idle, and, after many applications, Mr. Yorke, the First Lord of the Admiralty, favoured me with an appointment to command a sloop of war on the Downs station.
By midnight the breeze was as strong as ever, but they had clear moonlight and they held on; the craft plunging with flooded decks through the white combers, while Carroll sat at the helm, battered by spray and stung with cold. When Vane came up, an hour or two later, the sea was breaking viciously.
A school of small sharks scouted around her, and one big fellow, with his fin out of water like a trysail, loafed at a distance, as if sure of his prey. The combers purred on the shining stretches of beach, and the ripples of the current whispered at the side of the vessel, and in the peace that surrounded us Riggs's hammer made a terrific clatter. "Keep a sharp lookout, Mr.
Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of spray, and often sweeping it with deluges. Around the stern and bow the rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted. The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying.
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