Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"But he'll r-r-run her nose under!" Even as they spoke, the black tarpaulin swooped from sight behind a big comber. The next wave rolled over the spot, and the next, but the boat did not reappear. The Alma rushed by the place. A little riffraff of oats and boxes was seen. An arm thrust up and a shaggy head broke surface a score of yards away. For a time there was silence.
The great wave dashes onward, but as its bottom strikes the ground, the top, unretarded in its speed and force, breaks into a huge comber, and directly before this the surf-board swimmer is propelled with a speed which we timed and found to exceed forty miles per hour.
Peter knew nothing about fighting at all, but Comber had long subsisted on an easy reputation and he was a coward at heart. There swung into Peter's brain the picture of The Bending Mule, the crowding faces, the swinging lamp, Stephen with the sledge-hammer blow...it was the first time for weeks that he had thought of Treliss.
Two minutes later, during which the nasal howls from the boat were utterly ignored, the acting chief engineer hauled himself along the rail hand over hand to windward, ducking below the canvas guard as a more than usually big comber split against the Puncher's side and hove itself to heaven.
He was a simple sailorman, who contented himself with the baldest narrative; still, two of those who heard him could fill in the things he had not mentioned the mad lurching of the half-swamped boat, the tense struggle with the oars each time a big frothing comber forged out of the darkness, and the savage desperation of the drenched and half-frozen men cast away with the roaring surf to lee of them and their enemies watching upon the hammered beach.
"And to really waste your time like this loafing longshore, and sailing boats, and and driving an automobile. Why! you are a regular beach comber, Mr. Tapp. It's not much of an outlook for a man I should think." She suddenly stopped, realizing that she was showing more interest than the occasion called for. Lawford was watching her with smoldering eyes.
The sail had slipped down to the deck, the cross-boom sticking within easy reach of the hand. But that bit of canvas caught the hurricane with tremendous force, bending the mast threateningly and giving considerable headway to the Mayflower, which was taking every comber over forward. In that critical extremity the Rector became his real self again. "All hands, attention!
With a quick, sudden rush, ending in a great crash, the long heavy spar swept across the boat from starboard to port, knocking Bowsher overboard and carrying away the mast. The sloop swung around into the trough of the sea, in a tangle of sails, sheets, halyards, and standing rigging; and the next great comber came plump into her, filling her almost to the gunwales with a white smother of foam.
In the alternative of certain drowning in the undertow off Nazaret or of taking a chance among the rocks on the Breakwater, he would take the chance. Hadn't he been famous as the best swimmer in the Cabañal? On hands and knees, and at the risk of going overboard with the next wave, he crawled along from the rail to a hatch that had been torn off by a recent comber. He went down into the hold.
The Lord must 'a' steered that bundle, for it kept workin' along, headin' for a bit o' beach just by the pint. I had a rope round my waist, an' Lissy held onto the end, an' when the bundle struck I made fast with the boat hook and the next comber tumbled me end over, bundle an' all, up onto the sand. I grabbed at it, an' 'fore the next one come, had it high an' dry out o' the way.
Word Of The Day