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At one moment they were close to the beach, forced on to it by some tremendous wave; at the next, the receding water and the undertow swept them all back; and of the many who had been swimming one half had disappeared to rise no more. Francisco watched with agony as he perceived that the number decreased, and that none had yet gained the shore.
She pushed it into the water and sprang into it, pulling against the tide-rip like one possessed. I darted after her, but she was already ten yards out when the boat swamped and was thrown back on the beach. Just as the undertow was sucking Rita away, I grabbed at her and dragged her to safety. "Let me go! Let me go!" she screamed, battering my chest. "It's Joe. It's my Joe. He's drowning."
Lifted on a monstrous billow, which was itself lifted by the undertow and the shelving of the beach, the hulk seemed as if it were held aloft by some demon in order that it might be dashed to pieces. But the wave lost its hold, swept under the keel, staggered wildly up the slope, broke in a huge white deafening roll, and rushed backward in torrents.
The tide, which ran furiously round the promontory, had swept them all away, or the undertow of the deep water had buried every detached particle, to be delivered up again, "far, far at sea."
To take a specific example or two, what subject, for instance, is more worthy of a great master's brush than Homer's "Undertow," two half-drowned young bathers locked in each other's arms, the two beachmen dragging them clear of the mighty, blue-green wave curving behind them? Here is a subject of almost weekly occurrence on our coast. Who ever thought of painting it before?
Every man swam towards a place where a small point of land caused a sort of eddy and checked the force of the undertow. They all reached it in a few minutes, with the exception of Griffin, who had found bottom on a sand-bank, and stood, waist deep, laughing, apparently, at the struggles of his comrades. "You'd better come ashore," shouted one of the men.
As he touched this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as before, in quick succession.
Your undertow was that Draper devil's calculating hand!" I stared at Lillian, horrified. "But Lillian," I protested, faintly, "how is it that they all say she saved my life? If she really tried to drown me why didn't she let me go?" "Got cold feet," returned Lillian, laconically. "You see she isn't naturally evil enough deliberately to plan to kill you.
All through the Northwest, all through the central world of the Wheat the set and whirl of that innermost Pit made itself felt; and it spread and spread and spread till grain in the elevators of Western Iowa moved and stirred and answered to its centripetal force, and men upon the streets of New York felt the mysterious tugging of its undertow engage their feet, embrace their bodies, overwhelm them, and carry them bewildered and unresisting back and downwards to the Pit itself.
The old seaman, who at first had watched his motions with careless indifference, understood the danger of his situation at a glance; and, forgetful of his own fate, he shouted aloud, in a voice that was driven over the struggling victim to the ears of his shipmates on the sands: "Sheer to port, and clear the undertow! Sheer to the southward!"
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