Elzevir seized it with his left hand
and reached out his right to me. Our fingers touched, and in that very
moment the wave fell instantly, with an awful suck, and I was swept
down the beach again. Yet the under-tow took me not back to sea, for
amid the floating wreckage floated the shattered maintop, and in the
truck of that great spar I caught, and so was left with it upon the
beach thirty paces from the men and Elzevir. Then he left his own
assured salvation, namely the rope, and strode down again into the very
jaws of death to catch me by the hand and set me on my feet. Sight and
breath were failing me; I was numb with cold and half-dead from the
buffeting of the sea; yet his giant strength was powerful to save me
then, as it had saved me before. So when we heard once more the warning
crash and thunder of the returning wave we were but a fathom distant
from the rope. 'Take heart, lad,' he cried; ''tis now or never,' and as
the water reached our breasts gave me a fierce shove forward with his
hands. There was a roar of water in my ears, with a great shouting of
the men upon the beach, and then I caught the rope.
CHAPTER 19
ON THE BEACH
Toll for the brave,
The grave that are no more;
All sunk beneath the wave
Fast by their native shore--_Cowper_
The night was cold, and I had nothing on me save breeches and boots, and
those drenched with the sea, and had been wrestling with the surf so long
that there was little left in me.
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