beyond the foaming of the shell-reef, under a circling of gulls.
More dead? Yes--but something too that lives and moves, like a
quivering speck of gold; and Mateo also perceives it, a gleam of
bright hair,--and Miguel likewise, after a moment's gazing. A
living child;--a lifeless mother. Pobrecita! No boat within
reach, and only a mighty surf-wrestler could hope to swim thither
and return!

But already, without a word, brown Feliu has stripped for the
struggle;--another second, and he is shooting through the surf,
head and hands tunnelling the foam hills.... One--two--three
lines passed!--four!--that is where they first begin to crumble
white from the summit,--five!--that he can ride fearlessly! ...
Then swiftly, easily, he advances, with a long, powerful
breast-stroke,--keeping his bearded head well up to watch for
drift,--seeming to slide with a swing from swell to
swell,--ascending, sinking,--alternately presenting breast or
shoulder to the wave; always diminishing more and more to the
eyes of Mateo and Miguel,--till he becomes a moving speck,
occasionally hard to follow through the confusion of heaping
waters ... You are not afraid of the sharks, Feliu!--no: they
are afraid of you; right and left they slunk away from your
coming that morning you swam for life in West-Indian waters, with
your knife in your teeth, while the balls of the Cuban
coast-guard were purring all around you. That day the swarming
sea was warm,--warm like soup--and clear, with an emerald flash
in every ripple,--not opaque and clamorous like the Gulf today
... Miguel and his comrade are anxious. Ropes are unrolled and
inter-knotted into a line. Miguel remains on the beach; but
Mateo, bearing the end of the line, fights his way out,--swimming