s and with bleeding hands and
broken nails, he dug his way out to fall backward, all but exhausted,
gasping for breath in the dust-thickened air. Roused again by the slow
advance of the tide, he leaped up and stumbled away, blinded with the
agony in his eyes, only to crash against the metal hull of the vessel.
He turned about, the blood streaming from his face, and paused to
collect his senses, and with a rush, another wave swirled about his
ankles and knees. Exhaustion grew upon him. To stand still meant to
sink; to lie or sit meant to be buried the quicker; and all this in the
dark, all this in an air that could scarcely be breathed, all this while
he fought an enemy that could not be gripped, toiling in a sea that
could not be stayed.

Guided by the sound of the falling wheat, S. Behrman crawled on hands
and knees toward the hatchway. Once more he raised his voice in a shout
for help. His bleeding throat and raw, parched lips refused to utter
but a wheezing moan. Once more he tried to look toward the one patch of
faint light above him. His eye-lids, clogged with chaff, could no longer
open. The Wheat poured about his waist as he raised himself upon his
knees.

Reason fled. Deafened with the roar of the grain, blinded and made dumb
with its chaff, he threw himself forward with clutching fingers, rolling
upon his back, and lay there, moving feebly, the head rolling from side
to side. The Wheat, leaping continuously from the chute, poured around
him. It filled the pockets of the coat, it crept up the sleeves and
trouser legs, it covered the great, protuberant stomach, it ran at last
in rivulets into the distended, gasping mouth. It covered the face. Upon
the surface of the Wheat, under the chute, nothing moved but the Wheat
itself. There was no sign of life. Then, for an instant, the surface
stirred. A hand, fat, with short fingers and swollen veins, reached up,
clutching, then fell limp and prone. In another instant it was covered.
In the hold of the "Swanhilda" there was no movement but the widening
ripples that spread flowing from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming
cone; no sound, but the rushing of the Wheat that continued to plunge
incessantly from the iron chute in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady,
inevitable.

CONCLUSION

The "Swanhilda" cast off from the docks at Port Costa two days after
Presley had left Bonneville and the ranches and made her way up to San
Francisco, anchoring in the stream off