and caution by turns, went on until it
settled down into a strange compromise,--extreme care in certain
circumstances, and undue boldness at other times.

All over the British Channel there are patches of sand, shingle, or rock,
which being deep down are not dangerous as regards any risk of striking
upon them, but still even without any wind they cause the tide-stream to
rush over them in great eddies, and confused babbling waves. The water
below is in action, just like a waterfall tumbling over a hill, and the
whirlings and seethings above look threatening enough until you become
thoroughly aware of the exact state of the case, being precisely that
which occurs above Schaffhausen, on the deeps of the Rhine, and which we
have described in the account of a canoe voyage there.

These places are called by the French "ridens," or in England "ridges,"
and in some charts, "ripples" or "overfalls," and while there is sure to
be a short choppy sea upon them, even in calm weather, the effect of a
gale is to make them boil and foam ferociously.

A somewhat similar feature is the result when a low bank projects under
water from a cape round which the tide is rushing; and as I determined
not to risk going into Etretat, we had to face the tedious tossing about
off one of these banks, described thus in the Pilot-book:--

"Abreast Etretat the shoal bottom, with less than eight fathoms on it,
projects a mile to the N.N.W. from the shore, and when the flood-stream
is at its greatest strength it occasions a great eddy, named by the
mariners of the coast the _Hardieres_, which extends to the northward as
far as the Vaudieu Rock, and makes the sea hollow and heavy when the wind
is fresh from the eastward."

It was just because the wind was fresh from the eastward that I could
hope to stem the tide and get through this place; but once in the middle
of the hubbub, the wind went down almost to nothing, so that for three or
four hours I could only hold my place at most, and the wearisome monotony
here of "up and down" on every wave, with a jerk of all my bones each
time, was one of the few dull and disagreeable things of the whole
voyage.

A sea that is "hollow" is abominable. However high a wave is, it may
still have a rounded and respectable shape, and it will then tilt you
about smoothly; but a "hollow" sea splashes and smacks and twists and
screws, and the tiring effects on the body, thus hit right and left with
sudden blows, is qu