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Updated: June 15, 2025
Do you know?" he went on after a moment "I would like to see you in one, racing out with the whitecaps up there in Bering Sea; your face all wet with spray, and your hair tucked away in the hood of a gray fox parka. Nothing else would show; the rest of you would be stowed below in a wonderful little water-tight compartment." "It sounds delightful," she said, and the sparkles broke in her eyes.
The wind rose, the rain became pelting, mingling with the spume of the whitecaps racing madly past: within were warmth and luxury, electric lights, open fires, easy chairs, and men and women reading, conversing as unconcernedly as though the perils of the deep had ceased to be.
The skiff was towing with too long a painter, and was behaving very badly. Every once in a while it would hold back till the tow-rope tautened, then come leaping ahead and sheering and dropping slack till it threatened to shove its nose under the huge whitecaps which roared so hungrily on every hand.
Then the tide wash comes in with a rip like a whirlpool, or the ebb sets the beach combers rolling lashing billows of tumbling waters that crash together and set the sheets of blinding spray shattering. Or the fog comes down over a choppy sea with a whizzing wind that sets the whitecaps flying backward like a horse's mane. The chase may have led farther and farther from land.
The whitecaps were leaping on the crest of the surges driving in through the straits and the surf bursting high on the jagged rocks at the base of the cliffs. A little coast steamer from Santa Barbara way came pitching and plunging in from sea, and one or two venturesome craft, heeling far to leeward, tore through the billows and tossed far astern a frothing wake.
"I am a little twisted," said Snap. "Can we be in the vicinity of Humpback Rock?" "Perhaps we are," answered one of the others. Again they took up the oars. The wind tore along at a frightful rate of speed and the water was a mass of whitecaps. "I think " began Giant, when there came a sudden thump. The rowboat had struck the mass of rocks just mentioned, lying near the center of the lake.
When Josiah awoke the Mary Ellen was heeled over on her side, her sail as tight as a drumhead. The wind was whistling through the cordage, and the boat was racing through seas that were steel-blue and angry, with whitecaps on their crests. The sun was hidden by tumbling, dust-colored clouds. The boy felt weak and strangely humble; the dreadful nausea was gone.
The ocean was a stately procession of moving mountains. A third of a mile across yawned the valleys between the great waves. Their long slopes, shielded somewhat from the full fury of the wind, were broken by systems of smaller whitecapping waves, but from the high crests of the big waves themselves the wind tore the whitecaps in the forming.
Here, you take the wheel a minute. I want to smoke. I don't suppose you ever helmed a forty-footer, but you'll never learn younger." She took the wheel and Charlie stood by, directing her. In twenty minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted with whitecaps.
She careened once till she dipped water. "Get on the edge!" commanded Rance, easing the sail off. Lincoln climbed upon the edge of the little pine shell, scarcely eighteen inches high, and the boat steadied. Both looked relieved. The water was getting a lead color, streaked with foam, and the hissing of the whitecaps had a curiously snaky sound, as they spit water into the boat.
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