uld need every ounce of
strength to fight my way through the long stretch of surf that I knew
must now be breaking all along the shore. I therefore briefly explained
to the skipper of the torpedo-boat the mission upon which I was bound,
and what I wished him to do, and then, while he saw to the doing of his
part, I retired to his little cabin, stripped off my wet swimming kit,
and gave myself a vigorous towelling to banish the cold of even the
brief swim I had already undertaken. Meanwhile, the boat was got under
way and taken in toward Kinchau, with the lead going all the time; and
when at length she was as near the shore as it was at all prudent for
her to approach, she was turned with her head to seaward, and the
skipper came down to apprise me of the state of affairs. The boat had
taken about twenty minutes to feel her way in, and during that time I
had been assiduously practising gymnastics; I was therefore now not only
dry but also in a pleasant glow of warmth, and quite ready to undertake
the really formidable part of the task that still lay before me.

My swimming kit had meanwhile been taken down into the stokehole, so
that when it was handed to me it was not only nearly dry but, what was
very much more to the purpose, comfortably warm. Donning it and a fine
warm boat cloak, I accompanied the skipper to the deck and walked aft to
take a look at the task before me. I found that they had taken the boat
in to the very edge of the outer line of the surf, which stretched away
inshore of us, line after line, in an apparently interminable procession
of breakers, like lines of infantry rushing forward to the assault,
vaguely visible in their pallid phosphorescence against the blackness of
the starless night. To fight my way to the shore through that wide area
of roaring, leaping, and seething breakers promised to be a task that
would tax my strength and energy to their utmost limits; but it was a
case of necessity, and I had undertaken to do it; therefore, throwing
off the borrowed boat cloak, with a word of farewell to the skipper of
the boat, I waited for the next oncoming breaker, and dived overboard at
the precise moment when it would catch me up in its mighty arms and
sweep me, without effort on my part, a good twenty fathoms toward the
shore.

_B-r-r-r_! The water struck icy cold to my warm skin as I plunged deep
into the heart of the great arching mass of water, which caught me just
as I was rising to th