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When Skipper Zeb's oar broke, the boat, now at the mercy of the wind, was driven upon a submerged rock at the tip end of the reef extending some twenty yards out from the cliff known as the Duck's Head. Here it stuck for what seemed to Charley a long time, reeling in the surf until he was quite certain it would roll over and they would all be drowned. Mrs.

We could get hold of an oar or two, or lower down a grating, and hold on by that till we'd swam ashore." "And the sharks, Jem?" "Oh, those sharks!" cried Jem, pettishly. "I always forget them. I wish there wasn't such a thing as a shark on the face of the earth. Well, we must try some other way." "That's easy enough to say, Jem; but what way is there?"

But the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude.

By his orders the bones of the old general were torn from their tomb near the Anio and flung into that stream. The son of Marius had slain himself to prevent being taken. His head was brought to Sulla at Rome, who gazed on the youthful face with grim satisfaction, saying, "Those who take the helm must first serve at the oar."

When our third hour began, I saw that he was fast asleep at the oar lifting it indeed and dipping it in proper time, but without pulling the weight of an ounce upon it. I therefore took it from him, and told him to take half an hour's nap, when I would wake him up, and expect him to take the oars and give me a rest.

"I was reminded on this excursion of what I have read of the Mammoth Caves; if only I had had a yellow flambeau instead of the pervading blue light, and a solid-looking boatman with an oar instead of a scuttle-faced Selenite working an engine at the back of the canoe, I could have imagined I had suddenly got back to earth.

He shuddered at the thought that the boat, if it had been less carefully watched during the last night, would have been lost over those cataracts, that would only have restored dead bodies. But that was no longer to be feared, and, at that moment, the oar skilfully handled sufficed to maintain it in a direction a little oblique to the current.

In thirty seconds, as it seemed certain then, I would have been overboard; and do you think I would not have laid hold of the first thing that came in my way oar, life-buoy, grating anything? Wouldn't you?" "And be saved," I interjected. "I would have meant to be," he retorted.

At times it was an indistinct plashing, like the cautious advance of a boat, then again a sharp noise like the rattle of an oar and then the sound of something dropping in the water. Then silence. Sometimes whispered words, coming perhaps from a distance, perhaps from quite near, pierced through these opaque mists.

Nearer drew the raft, and at length I made out that only one person sat upon it, steering with an oar. The people who were all by this time down on the beach soon discovered their mistake, and began to vent their disappointment by uttering curses on the head of the stranger, we coming in for a share of their anger.