THE HIGHLAND LIGHT. 
145 
ing thrown their fish overboard, those in one boat chose 
a favorable opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and 
good luck, in reaching the land, but they were unwill¬ 
ing to take the responsibility of telling the others when 
to come in, and as the other helmsman was inexperi¬ 
enced, their boat w^as swamped at once, yet all man¬ 
aged to save themselves. 
Much smaller waves soon make a boat “ nail-sick,” as 
the phrase is. The keeper said that after a long and 
strong blow there would be three large waves, each suc¬ 
cessively larger than the last, and then no large ones for 
some time, and that, when they wished to land in a 
boat, they came in on the last and largest wave. Sir 
Thomas Browne (as quoted in Brand’s Popular Antiq¬ 
uities, p. 372), on the subject of the tenth wave being 
greater or more dangerous than any other,” after quot¬ 
ing Ovid,— 
“ Qui venit hie fluctus, fluctns supereminet omnes 
Posterior nono est, undecimo que prior,” — 
says, “Which, notwithstanding, is evidently false; nor 
can it be made out either by observation either upon the 
shore or the ocean, as we have with diligence explored 
in both. And surely in vain we expect regularity in the 
waves of the sea, or in the particular motions thereof, as 
we may in its general reciprocations, whose causes are 
constant, and effects therefore correspondent; whereas 
its fluctuations are but motions subservient, which winds, 
storms, shores, shelves, and every interjacency, irreg- 
ulates.” 
We read that the Clay Pounds were so called, “be¬ 
cause vessels have had the misfortune to be pounded 
against it in gales of wind,” which we regard as a doubt- 
7 j 
