ooth, so
completely had the great wave levelled it. The canoe being water-logged,
settled below the surface, the high points of the ends occasionally
emerging from the water. Other heavy seas followed the first, one of
which striking me as high as my head and shoulders, turned both the
canoe and canoeist upside-down.

Kicking myself free of the canvas deck, I struck out from under the
shell, and quickly rose to the surface. It was then that the words of
an author of a European Canoe Manual came to my mind: "When you
capsize, first right the canoe and get astride it over one end,
keeping your legs in the water; when you have crawled to the well or
cockpit, bale out the boat with your hat." Comforting as these
instructions from an experienced canoe traveller seemed when reading
them in my hermitage ashore, the present application of them (so
important a principle in Captain Jack Bunsby's log of life) was in
this emergency an impossibility; for my hat had disappeared with the
seat-cushion and one iron outrigger, while the oars were floating to
leeward with the canoe.

The boat having turned keel up, her great sheer would have righted her
had it not been for the cargo, which settled itself on the canvas
deck-cloth, and ballasted the craft in that position. So smooth were her
polished sides that it was impossible to hold on to her, for she rolled
about like a slippery porpoise in a tideway. Having tested and proved
futile the kind suggestions of writers on marine disasters, and feeling
very stiff in the icy water, I struck out in an almost exhausted
condition for the shore. Now a new experience taught me an interesting
lesson. The seas rolled over my head and shoulders in such rapid
succession, that I found I could not get my head above water to breathe,
while the sharp sand kept in suspension by the agitated water scratched
my face, and filled my eyes, nostrils, and ears. While I felt this
pressing down and burying tendency of the seas, as they broke upon my
head and shoulders, I understood the reason why so many good swimmers
are drowned in attempting to reach the shore from a wreck on a shoal,
when the wind, though blowing heavily, is in the victim's favor. The
land was not over an eighth of a mile away, and from it came the sullen
roar of the breakers, pounding their heavy weight upon the sandy
shingle. As its booming thunders or its angry, swashing sound increased,
I knew I was rapidly nearing it, but, blinded by the