be had, they stood long gazing upon it, awestruck and fascinated by the
terrific grandeur of the scene. I can best describe it in the words of a
fellow-author far more gifted in that line than I.

"Yonder comes shoreward a great wave, towering above all its brethren.
Onward it comes, swift as a race-horse, graceful as a great ship,
bearing right down upon us. It strikes 'The Rips,' and is there itself
struck by a wave approaching from another direction. The two converge in
their advance, and are dashed together--embrace each other like two
angry giants, each striving to mount upon the shoulder of the other and
crush its antagonist with its ponderous bulk. Swift as thought they
mount higher and higher, in fierce, mad struggle, until their force is
expended; their tops quiver, tremble, and burst into one great mass of
white, gleaming foam; and the whole body of the united wave, with a
mighty bound, hurls itself upon the shore and is broken into a flood of
seething waters--crushed to death in its own fury.

"All over the shoal the waves leap up in pinnacles, in volcanic points,
sharp as stalagmites, and in this form run hither and yon in all
possible directions, colliding with and crashing against others of equal
fury and greatness--a very carnival of wild and drunken waves; the
waters hurled upward in huge masses of white. Sometimes they unite more
gently, and together sweep grandly and gracefully along parallel with
the shore; and the cavernous hollows stretch out from the shore so that
you look into the trough of the sea and realize what a terrible depth
it is. The roar, meanwhile, is horrible. You are stunned by it as by the
roar of a great waterfall. You see a wave of unusual magnitude rolling
in from far beyond the wild revelry of waters on 'The Rips.' It leaps
into the arena as if fresh and eager for the fray, clutches another
Bacchanal like itself, and the two towering floods rush swiftly toward