I AN OCEAN SWELL 19 



boat. Thereafter the swell from the Western 

 Ocean came hurling in, broad and swift rather 

 than high, flecked with foam — great bodies of 

 water carrying secondary waves on their backs. 

 They began sweeping the shore, running up it not 

 so much with violence as with power. In a few min- 

 utes boats and gear were awash all across beach. 

 Men bundled out from their beds, hauling up-over 

 where they could, but perforce leaving the boats 

 down where there was no room, between the wall 

 and the surf, to push them back for placing the 

 shoots under their bows. Then the owners could 

 only steady them with ropes, and wait helplessly. 

 Looking across beach, under a lowering sky 

 which seemed to flatten everything, one could see 

 busy blue men jumping about among brown boats 

 that lay no longer in orderly ranks, bows upwards, 

 but were askew and even broadside on, between 

 the unmoving wall and the vicious land-licking 

 surf that darted upwards like hungry flames. 

 Sometimes boats moved in jerks: that was men 

 hauling. Then they glided : that was the sea had 

 hold of them. Oars, ways, boxes, and gear gal- 

 loped alongshore in the wash. 



Wet to the skin, but with all our boats hauled 

 upon the sea-wall, we waited: the sea heaved 



