"Siwashes," said Jimmy; "one of their sea canoes. They have to keep her running. She wouldn't lie-to."
The craft drew abreast of them, traveling wonderfully fast, and Anthea long remembered how she drove by the _Sorata_, hove half her length out of water, riding on the ridge of a big gray sea. She was entirely open, a long, narrow, bird-headed thing, and the foam she flung off forward seemed to lap over her after-half. A little drenched spritsail was spread from an insignificant mast, and four crouching figures with dusky faces were partly visible amidst the wisps of spray that whirled about her. One of them held a long paddle, and looked fixedly ahead; the others gazed at the _Sorata_ expressionlessly until the craft swooped down between two seas. Jimmy saw his companion's hands clench on the coaming, and the color ebb from her face, and then she gasped as the little strip of canvas swung into sight again.
"Ah!" she said, "it's a trifle horrible to watch them; and what must it be to steer her? How many of us in the cities know what the struggle for existence really is?"
Jimmy nodded assent. "At least," he said, "the thing is tolerably clear to the men who live at sea. If that Siwash lost his nerve for a moment the next comber would swallow the canoe. After all, the sea knows no distinctions; white men and red men alike must face the strain."
"Of course. I'm not sure it isn't a little heavier there. When you are traveling as fast as a freight train there is little time to decide how you will clear a crossing steamer, or to pick out green from yellow among a blink of sliding lights. The man who fails is very apt to hurl as much as fourteen thousand tons of hull and cargo into destruction, and, perhaps, two thousand passengers into another world, though some vessels now carry more than that. The owner seldom gets rich when he doesn't; and there is, after all, no very great difference between his lot and that of the Siwash, who stakes his life against the value of a few salmon or halibut."
He broke off with a laugh. "Hadn't you better go back? You are getting very wet."
Anthea did so, and it was almost noon when she came up again. Jimmy still sat at the tiller, and his wet face looked a trifle worn; but the breeze had softened, and as the girl glanced round her, a shaft of sunlight fell suddenly upon the foaming sea.