fted up
by its bows, turned directly over backwards, and all the contents
spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the same way.

I heard of a party who went off fishing back of Wellfleet some years
ago, in two boats, in calm weather, who, when they had laden their boats
with fish, and approached the land again, found such a swell breaking on
it, though there was no wind, that they were afraid to enter it. At
first they thought to pull for Provincetown; but night coming on, and
that was many miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate one. As often
as they approached the shore and saw the terrible breakers that
intervened, they were deterred. In short, they were thoroughly
frightened. Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those in one
boat chose a favorable opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good
luck, in reaching the land; but they were unwilling to take the
responsibility of telling the others when to come in, and as the other
helmsman was inexperienced, their boat was swamped at once, yet all
managed to save themselves.

Much smaller waves soon make a boat "nail-sick," as the phrase is. The
keeper said that after a long and strong blow there would be three large
waves, each successively larger than the last, and then no large ones
for some time, and that, when they wished to land in a boat, they came
in on the last and largest wave. Sir Thomas Browne, (as quoted in
Brand's "Popular Antiquities," p. 372,) on the subject of the tenth wave
being "greater or more dangerous than any other," after quoting Ovid,--

"Qui venit hic fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes:
Posterior nono est, undecimoque prior,"--

says, "Which, notwithstanding, is evidently false; nor can it be made
out by observation either upon the shore or the ocean, as we have with
diligence explored in both. And surely in vain we expect a regularity in
the waves of the sea, or in the particular motions thereof, as we may in
its general reciprocations, whose causes are constant, and effects
therefore correspondent; whereas its fluctuations are but motions
subservient, which winds, storms, shores, shelves, and every
interjacency irregulates."

We read that the Clay Pounds were so called "because vessels have had
the misfortune to be pounded against them in gales of wind," which we
regard as a doubtful derivation. There are small ponds here, upheld by
the clay, which were formerly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps this, or
Clay P