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Updated: May 27, 2025
Shut your eyes, and the inward vision sees once more the long line of sandy and shingly beaches, the green curving-up of the surges tipped with dazzling foam, sees the motionless and blackened timbers of the wreck on the shore, the white wings dipping and turning along the combing tops of the waves racing in upon the sands, sees the dry tufted beach-grass, and the wet, shining, compact slope down which slides swiftly the under-tow.
"It will not be very easy to reach the holme this afternoon," Yaspard remarked thoughtfully. "There's a heavy under-tow there." "But we can't go away and leave him, brodhor. Just look at him. Now he tries to raise himself. It is dreadful."
None of the crew could understand it, if they were to be believed; and the more sagacious talked of currents and mysterious "under-tow." And sure enough it was under-tow, the mystery of which was simple. One of the very best hands on board was a hardy seaman from Flamborough, akin to old Robin Cockscroft, and no stranger to his adopted son.
"Here, my dearest," she said, "at home, at Brockhurst, with me." "Ah yes!" he said, "of course, I remember, I'm dying." He waited a little space, and then, turning his head on the pillow so as to have a better view of her, spoke again: "I was floating right out the under-tow had got me it was sucking me down into the deep sea of mist and dreams. I was so nearly gone and you brought me back."
I had gone to the beach to bathe as usual, at a point new to me, and where I had not seen many people bathe before. It chanced to be one of the worst places for this "under-tow," and shortly after entering the water I got into its gripe, and was drawn outward into the open sea, far beyond the distance I could have swum back.
For when the Bataviaman went on the beach, I stood as near her as our rescuers had stood to us last night, and there were some aboard who took the fatal leap from off her bows and tried to battle through the surf. I was so near them I could mark their features and read the wild hope in their faces at the first, and then the under-tow took hold of them, and never one that saved his life that day.
The white line was nearer to us now, and above all the rage of wind and sea I could hear the awful roar of the under-tow sucking back the pebbles on the beach.
Others maintained there was a strong under-tow here at the point which ran farther in, toward Big Church Inlet, and that he had been carried over there. Then Glory Goldie had the draglines lengthened, so that they would reach down to the lowest depths of the lake, and she ordered every foot of Big Church Inlet dragged; yet she did not succeed in bringing her father back into the light of day.
The sea is delightfully tepid, but it is not without risk, it becomes deep within biscuit-toss, there is a strong under-tow, and occasionally an ugly triangular fin may be seen cruizing about in unpleasant proximity.
On my return, I found the same silence and shrugging of the shoulders, although by a generation of villagers altogether different from those I had left behind. And this, too, notwithstanding that several accidents had occurred in my absence, to prove that the "under-tow" did actually exist, and that it was actually dangerous.
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