ind increased no more, for its caprice might have been very different.

Then began that excellent game which it is so hard to play, but so good
to remember, and in which all men, whether they admit it or not, are
full of fear, but it is a fear so steeped in exhilaration that one would
think the personal spirit of the sea was mingled with the noise of the
air.

For a whole great hour she roared and lifted through it still, taking
the larger seas grandly, with disdain, as she had taken the smaller, and
still over the buried lee rail the stream of the sea went by rejoicing
and pouring, and the sheets and the weather runner trembled with the
vigour of the charge, and on she went, and on. I was weary of the seas
ahead (for each and individually they struck my soul as they came, even
more strongly than they struck the bows--steep, curling, unintermittent,
rank upon rank upon rank, as innumerable cavalry); still watching them,
I say, I groped round with my hand behind the cabin door and pulled out
brandy and bread, and drank brandy and ate bread, still watching the
seas. And, as men are proud of their companions in danger, so I was
proud to see the admirable lift and swing of that good boat, and to note
how, if she slowed for a moment under the pounding, she recovered with
a stride, rejoicing; and as for my fears, which were now fixed and
considerable, I found this argument against them: that, though I could
see nothing round me but the sea, yet soon I should be under the lee of
the Goodwins, for, though I could not exactly calculate my speed, and
though in the haze beyond nothing appeared, it was certain that I was
roaring very quickly towards the further shore.

When, later, the sea grew confused and full of swirls and boiling, I
said to myself: "This must be the tail of the Goodwins." But it was,
not. For, though I did not know it, the ebb of the great spring tide had
carried me right away down Channel, and there was not twelve feet of
water under the keel, for the seething of the sea that I noticed came
from the Varne--the Varne, that curious, long, steep hill, with its twin
ridge close by, the Colbert; they stand right up in the Channel between
France and England; they very nearly lift their heads above the waves. I
passed over the crest of them, unknowing, into the deep beyond, and
still the ship raced on. Then, somewhat suddenly, so suddenly that I
gave a cry, I saw right up above me, through what was now a thick haze,