r" betokening strong excitement,--while he
points to something rocking in the ebb, beyond the foaming of the
shell-reef, under a circling of gulls. More dead? Yes--but something
too that lives and moves, like a quivering speck of gold; and Mateo
also perceives it, a gleam of bright hair,--and Miguel likewise, after
a moment's gazing. A living child;--a lifeless mother. Pobrecita! No
boat within reach, and only a mighty surf-wrestler could hope to swim
thither and return!

But already, without a word, brown Feliu has stripped for the
struggle;--another second, and he is shooting through the surf, head
and hands tunnelling the foam hills.... One--two--three lines
passed!--four!--that is where they first begin to crumble white from
the summit,--five!--that he can ride fearlessly! ... Then swiftly,
easily, he advances, with a long, powerful breast-stroke,--keeping his
bearded head well up to watch for drift,--seeming to slide with a swing
from swell to swell,--ascending, sinking,--alternately presenting
breast or shoulder to the wave; always diminishing more and more to the
eyes of Mateo and Miguel,--till he becomes a moving speck, occasionally
hard to follow through the confusion of heaping waters ... You are not
afraid of the sharks, Feliu!--no: they are afraid of you; right and
left they slunk away from your coming that morning you swam for life in
West-Indian waters, with your knife in your teeth, while the balls of
the Cuban coast-guard were purring all around you. That day the
swarming sea was warm,--warm like soup--and clear, with an emerald
flash in every ripple,--not opaque and clamorous like the Gulf today
... Miguel and his comrade are anxious. Ropes are unrolled and
inter-knotted into a line. Miguel remains on the beach; but Mateo,
bearing the end of the line, fights his way out,--swimming and wading
by turns, to the further sandbar, where the water is shallow enough to
stand in,--if you know how to jump when the breaker comes.

But Feliu, nearing the flooded shell-bank, watches the white
flashings,--knows when the time comes to keep flat and take a long,
long breath. One heavy volleying of foam,--darkness and hissing as of
a steam-burst; a vibrant lifting up; a rush into light,--and again the
volleying and the seething darkness. Once more,--and the fight is won!
He feels the upcoming chill of deeper water,--sees before him the green
quaking of unbroken swells,--and far beyond him Mateo leaping on the