“It was like seeing a ghost,” I said,—“no—more like feeling the hand of an enemy on your shoulder.”
“Yes. Talk about the scientific attitude—you’ve just got to personify things when they come at you like that. That wave had an expression—an ugly one. I don’t wonder the Northmen felt as they did about the sea and the waves. They took it all personally—they had to!”
“No, of course not,” I said, almost too promptly. Then I meditated—“I don’t know what you’d call it—but I believe I understand now what people mean when they talk about their hearts going down into their boots.”
“Why, not exactly—but—well—it certainly did feel suddenly very thick and heavy—as if it had dropped—perhaps an inch or two.”
“I believe,” said Jonathan gently, “you might almost call that being frightened.”
“Yes, perhaps you might. Tell me—were you?”
“I didn’t like it—yes, I was anxious—and it made me tired to have been such a fool—the whole thing was absolutely unnecessary, if we’d looked up the charts carefully.”
“Or asked a few questions. But you know you hate to ask questions.”
“Well, anyway, aren’t you glad it happened?”
“No”—he was emphatic—“not with that load.”
If the winds sometimes wearied us a little, they helped us, too. We can never forget the evening we turned into the Thames River, making for the shelter of a friend’s hospitable roof. We had battled most of that day with the diagonal onslaughts of a southeast gale, bringing with it the full swing of the ocean swell. It was easier than a southwester would have been, but that was the best that could be said for it.
We passed the last buoy and turned our bow north. And suddenly, the great waves that had all day kept us on the defensive became our strong helpers. They took us up and swung us forward on our course with great sweeping rushes of motion. The tide was setting in, too, and with that and our oars we were going almost as fast as the waves themselves, so that when one picked us up, it swung us a long way before it left us. We learned to watch for each roller, wait till one came up astern, then pull with all our might so that we went swooping down its long slope, its crest at first just behind our stern, but drawing more and more under us, until it passed beyond our bow and dropped us in the trough to wait for the next giant. It was like going in a swing, but with the downward rush very long and swift, and the upward rise short and slow. How long it took us to make the two miles to our friend’s dock we shall never know. Probably only a few minutes. But it was not an experience in time. We had a sense of being at one with the great primal forces of wind and water, and at one with them, not in their moments of poise, but in their moments of resistless power.