dly into the hideous yeast of seething
waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth
chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet
touched, the tangled and rotting string of sea-twine that waved about
his legs, sent a strong shudder through him; and there was a sick clammy
feeling about the frothy spume through which he had to plunge. But when
he had once ploughed his way through all this, and was fairly out of his
depth, the exercise warmed him, and he rose with a swimmer's triumphant
motion over the yielding waves. On and on he swam, thinking only of
that, not looking before him; but when he began to feel quite tired, and
_did_ look, he saw that he was not nearly halfway to the headland. He
saw, too, how the breakers were lashing and fighting with the iron shore
which he was madly striving to reach. Even if he could swim so far--and
he now _felt_ that he could not--how could he ever land at such a spot?
Would not one of those billows toss him up in its playful spray, and
dash him as it dashed its own unpitied offspring, dead upon the rocks?
And as this conviction dawned on him, withering all his energy of heart,
the wind wailed over him, the water bubbled in his ears, and the
sea-mew, napping as it flew past him, uttered above his head its
plaintive scream. His heart sank within him. With a quick motion he
turned in the water, and with arms wearied-out he swam back again, as
for dear life, towards the little landing-place which alone divided him
from instant death; struggling on heavily, with limbs so weary that he
could barely move them through the waves, whose increasing swell often
broke around his head. Already the tide had reached the spot where he
had let his straw hat drop on the beach; the sea was scornfully playing
with it, tossing it up and down, whirling it round and round like a
feather; the wind blew it to the sea, and the sea, receiving no gifts
from an enemy, flung it back again; but the wind carried the day, and
while Kenrick was wringing the brine out of his dripping hair, and
huddling his clothes again over his wet, benumbed, and aching limbs, he
saw the straw hat fairly launched, and floating away over the waves.

And then it was that, as the vision of sudden death glared out before
his eyes, and the horror of it leapt upon him, that a scream--a loud,
wild, echoing scream, which sounded strange in that lonely place, and
rose above the rude song that