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 over, hanging to the
side of one of those ridiculous ocean rollers out of bounds; and he
thought it no wonder that he--even he--had been tossed off under the
circumstances. The crew, who were not sitting on a skimming dish, as it
were, had their work cut out to hold on. As he looked, he measured his
drift with serious disquietude, although the preposterous idea of
anybody being drowned had not as yet occurred to him. Drowned HERE! A
good joke, indeed! Why, they were within hail of Sandridge, and
half-a-dozen ships--or they would have been, but for the noise of wind
and water, which smothered lesser sounds; and the lights of
Williamstown--amongst them that of the little home awaiting him--
studded the shore on the other hand, near and clear, like the eyes of a
host of watching friends. And in Hobson's Bay, which could hardly cover
the body of a sunk yacht; and right up by the river, which had to be
dredged all the time to keep it open!