t with the next moment there
they were, pulling close up. I shut my eyes for a flash with some kind
of a prayer that was most like an imprecation, and when I looked again
they had dashed over and dashed over, taking the rise of the long roll,
and were in the midst of the South Breaker. O God! that terrible South
Breaker! The oars bent lithe as willow-switches, a moment they
skimmed on the caps, a moment were hid in the snow of the spray. Dan,
red-shirted, still stood there, his whole soul on the aim before him,
like that of some leaper flying through the air; he swayed to the
stroke, he bowed, he rose, perfectly balanced, and flexile as the wave.
The boat behaved beneath their hands like a live creature: she bounded
so that you almost saw the light under her; her whole steal lifted
itself slowly out of the water, caught the back of a roller and rode
over upon the next; the very things that came rushing in with their
white rage to devour her bent their necks and bore her up like a bubble.
Constantly she drew nearer that dark and shattered heap up to which the
fierce surf raced, and over which it leaped. And there all the time, all
the time, they had been clinging, far out on the bowsprit, those two
figures, her arms close-knit about him, he clasping her with one, the
other twisted in the hawser, whose harsh thrilling must have filled
their ears like an organ-note as it swung them to and fro,--clinging
to life,--clinging to each other more than to life. The wreck scarcely
heaved with the stoutest blow of the tremendous surge; here and there,
only, a plank shivered off and was bowled on and thrown high upon the
beach beside fragments of beams broken and bruised to a powder; it
seemed to be as firmly planted there as the breaker itself. Great
feathers of foam flew across it, great waves shook themselves thin
around it and veiled it in shrouds, and with their every breath the
smothering sheets dashed over them,--the two. And constantly the boat
drew nearer, as I said; they were almost within hail; Dan saw her hair
streaming on the wind; he waited only for the long wave. On it came,
that long wave,--oh! I can see it now!--plunging and rearing and
swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooning and rocking in. Its
hollows gaped with slippery darkness, it towered and sent the scuds
before its trembling crest, breaking with a mighty rainbow as the sun
burst forth, it fell in a white blindness everywhere, rushed seething up
th