, but ain't these a host in themselves? You keep your tongue
under hatches, Dan, or I'll have to lash it to your jaw with a bit o'
rope-yarn."

"Oh, _what_ a yarn I'd spin with it if you did!" retorted the
incorrigible Dan. "But how are the jumpers to go, and where are they?"

"They may go as they please," returned Adams, as he led the way to the
footpath down the cliffs; "they went to help the women wi' the victuals,
an' I've no doubt are at their favourite game of slidin' on the waves."

He was right in this conjecture. While the younger women and girls of
the village were busy carrying the provisions to the beach, those active
little members of the community who were styled jumpers, and of whom
there were still half-a-dozen, were engaged in their favourite game. It
was conducted amid shouts and screams of delight, which rose above the
thunder of the mighty waves that rolled in grand procession into the
bay.

Ned Quintal, the stoutest and most daring, as well as the oldest of
these jumpers, being over eight years, was the best slider. He was on
the point of dashing into the sea when Adams and the others arrived on
the scene.

Clothed only with a little piece of tapa cloth formed into breeches
reaching to about the knees, his muscular little frame was shown to full
advantage, as he stood with streaming curly hair, having a thin board
under his arm, about three feet long, and shaped like a canoe.

He watched a mighty wave which was coming majestically towards him.
Just as it was on the point of falling, little Ned held up the board in
front of him, and with one vigorous leap dived right through the wave,
and came out at the other side. Thus he escaped being carried by it to
the shore, and swam over the rolling backs of the waves that followed it
until he got out to sea. Then, turning his face landward, he laid his
board on the water, and pushing it under himself, came slowly in,
watching for a larger wave than usual. As he moved along, little Billy
Young ranged alongside.

"Here's a big un, Billy," cried Ned, panting with excitement and
exertion, as he looked eagerly over his shoulder at a billow which
seemed big enough to have wrecked an East Indiaman.

Billy did not reply, for, having a spice of Dan McCoy's fun-loving
spirit in him, he was intent on giving Ned's board a tip and turning it
over.

As the wave came up under them, it began as it were to boil on the
surface, a sure sign that it was about