, for my bulk
swells to a very unusual degree, and if we are not the more careful, she
will presently be swamped."

With that he threw his legs over the side. Even as he did so, the
greatness of the man grew thirty-fold and forty-fold as swift as sight
or thinking, so that he stood in the deep seas to the armpits, and his
head and shoulders rose like a high isle, and the swell beat and burst
upon his bosom, as it beats and breaks against a cliff. The boat ran
still to the north, but he reached out his hand, and took the gunwale by
the finger and thumb, and broke the side like a biscuit, and Keola was
spilled into the sea. And the pieces of the boat the sorcerer crushed in
the hollow of his hand and flung miles away into the night.

"Excuse me taking the lantern," said he; "for I have a long wade before
me, and the land is far, and the bottom of the sea uneven, and I feel
the bones under my toes."

And he turned and went off walking with great strides; and as often as
Keola sank in the trough he could see him no longer; but as often as he
was heaved upon the crest, there he was striding and dwindling, and he
held the lamp high over his head, and the waves broke white about him as
he went.

Since first the islands were fished out of the sea there was never a man
so terrified as this Keola. He swam indeed, but he swam as puppies swim
when they are cast in to drown, and knew not wherefore. He could but
think of the hugeness of the swelling of the warlock, of that face which
was as great as a mountain, of those shoulders that were broad as an
isle, and of the seas that beat on them in vain. He thought, too, of the
concertina, and shame took hold upon him; and of the dead men's bones,
and fear shook him.

Of a sudden he was aware of something dark against the stars that
tossed, and a light below, and a brightness of the cloven sea; and he
heard speech of men. He cried out aloud and a voice answered; and in a
twinkling the bows of a ship hung above him on a wave like a thing
balanced, and swooped down. He caught with his two hands in the chains
of her, and the next moment was buried in the rushing seas, and the next
hauled on board by seamen.

They gave him gin and biscuit and dry clothes, and asked him how he came
where they found him, and whether the light which they had seen was the
lighthouse Lae o Ka Laau. But Keola knew white men are like children and
only believe their own stories; so about himself he told them w