nd in cold water too; for
that day, which opened so calmly and with such smiling promises, was
destined to prove a season of trial, and before its evening shadows
closed around me, to witness a severe struggle for life in the cold
waters of Delaware Bay.

An hour after leaving Murderkill Creek the wind came from the north in
strong squalls. My little boat taking the blasts on her quarter, kept
herself free of the swashy seas hour after hour. I kept as close to the
sandy beach of the great marshes as possible, so as to be near the land
in case an accident should happen. Mispillion Creek and a light-house on
the north of its mouth were passed, when the wind and seas struck my
boat on the port beam, and continually crowded her ashore. The water
breaking on the hard, sandy beach of the marshy coast made it too much
of a risk to attempt a landing, as the canoe would be smothered in the
swashy seas if her headway was checked for a moment. Amidships the canoe
was only a few inches out of water, but her great sheer, full bow, and
smoothness of hull, with watchful management, kept her from swamping. I
had struggled along for fourteen miles since morning, and was fatigued
by the strain consequent upon the continued manoeuvring of my boat
through the rough waves. I reached a point on Slaughter Beach, where
the bay has a width of nearly nineteen miles, when the tempest rose to
such a pitch that the great raging seas threatened every moment to wash
over my canoe, and to force me by their violence close into the beach.
To my alarm, as the boat rose and fell on the waves, the heads of
sharp-pointed stakes appeared and disappeared in the broken waters. They
were the stakes of fishermen to which they attach their nets in the
season of trout-fishing. The danger of being impaled on one of these
forced me off shore again.

There was no undertow; the seas being driven over shoals were irregular
and broken. At last _my_ sea came. It rolled up without a crest, square
and formidable. I could not calculate where it would break, but I pulled
for life away from it towards the beach upon which the sea was breaking
with deafening sound. It was only for a moment that I beheld the great
brown wave, which bore with it the mud of the shoal, bearing down upon
me; for the next, it broke astern, sweeping completely over the canoe
from stern to stem, filling it through the opening of the canvas round
my body. Then for a while the watery area was almost sm