n the teeth of the wind, and
straight towards the roar of the breakers on the farther side of the
sand. A line of Matthew Arnold's, 'The naked shingles of the world,'
was running in my head. 'Seven miles from land,' I thought,
'scuttling like sea-birds on a transient islet of sand, encircled by
rushing tides and hammered by ocean, at midnight in a rising
gale--cut off even from our one dubious refuge.' It was the time, if
ever, to conquer weakness. A mad gaiety surged through me as I drank
the wind and pressed forward. It seemed but a minute or two and
Davies clutched me.

'Look out!' he shouted. 'It's my channel.'

The ground sloped down, and a rushing river glimmered before us. We
struck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north,
stumbling in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to be
blinded by a fine salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of the
ocean surf. The river broadened, whitened, roughened, gathered itself
for the shock, was shattered, and dissolved in milky gloom. We
wheeled away to the right, and splashed into yeasty froth. I turned
my back to the wind, scooped the brine out of my eyes, faced back and
saw that our path was barred by a welter of surf. Davies's voice was
in my ear and his arm was pointing seaward.

'This--is--about where--I--bumped first--worse then nor'-west
wind--this--is--nothing. Let's--go--right--round.'

We galloped away with the wind behind us, skirting the line of surf.
I lost all account of time and direction. Another sea barred our
road, became another river as we slanted along its shore. Again we
were in the teeth of that intoxicating wind. Then a point of light
was swaying and flickering away to the left, and now we were checking
and circling. I stumbled against something sharp--the dinghy's
gunwale. So we had completed the circuit of our fugitive domain, that
dream-island--nightmare island as I always remember it.

'You must scull, too,' said Davies. 'It's blowing hard now. Keep her
nose _up_ a little--all you know!'

We lurched along, my scull sometimes buried to the thwart, sometimes
striking at the bubbles of a wave top. Davies, in the bows, said
'Pull!' or 'Steady!' at intervals. I heard the scud smacking against
his oilskin back. Then a wan, yellow light glanced over the waves.
'Easy! Let her come!' and the bowsprit of the 'Dulcibella', swollen to
spectral proportions, was stabbing the darkness above me. 'Back a
bit! Two good strokes. Ship your s