over, and the
young wife and husband, holding to nothing but one another, and simply
sitting upon an unprotected plank, were tipped out as easily as balls
from a capsized basket.

"Oh, this is too absurd!"

That was Guthrie's mental ejaculation in the astonishing first moment.
A deep-sea sailor, who had come through what he had come through, to
let himself be caught unawares by such a paltry mischance as this!
Then, what an unspeakable ass to have been so careless--to have shown
himself incapable of protecting his wife, after all his boasts! Would
he ever hear the last of it as long as he lived? Poor little woman! How
cold the water felt when he thought of her tender skin. And her pretty
dress, that she had set such store by, in which she had intended to go
to church with him on Sunday--utterly destroyed, of course! Well, he
must make shift to afford her another and smarter one, and get it made
quickly. She should have her pick and choice. As the following wave
soused his uprising head, slapping him full in the face, so as to
confuse and blind him for a second or two, the fear that she might get
"a dose of it" before they could pull her out made him sharply anxious.
If she got a bad cold, a shock to her nerves, perhaps a serious
illness, he would never forgive himself. And what a sell that would
be--what waste of this precious holiday, this second honeymoon, so much
sweeter than the first--after the weary waiting for it!

He cleared his eyes, and had a momentary view of the surroundings
before another wave rushed upon him. Waves they were, by George! He
would not have believed it possible that such a sea would be running
right up here, in this little duck-pond of a bay. It had seemed rough
on the boat, but viewed from the surface, it might have been the middle
of Atlantic wastes. They were in the river channel--worse luck!--and
the south wind was dead on to it, bringing up the swell from outside;
and the swell, that had set that way for days, was so heavy as to drive
him back faster than his powerful limbs could propel him in the other
direction. At first the launch seemed to want to dance over him, but
when he rose on a swirl of water to take his bearings after the first
bewilderment, she was a couple of lengths away, cutting the most
extraordinary capers in her efforts to put about. Her own lights, and
those of the beacons at the river mouth, showed him all her stern
grating and bright deck fittings as she heeled o