oosely, so that if
need was it would fall from her at once; and I belted my mail
close, and tried to think how I might save her, if we must take to
the water perforce. I could swim in the mail well enough, and she
could swim also. There might be a chance for her. I feared more for
Dalfin.

Now we flew down on the first line of breakers, lifted on the
crest, half blinded with the foam, and plunged across it. I held my
breath as the bows swooped downward into the hollow of the wave,
fearing to feel the crash of the ship's striking, but she lifted
again to the next roller, while the white foam covered the decks as
the broken gunwale aft lurched amid it. So we passed four great
surges safely, and we were not an arrow flight from land. The water
was deep enough for us so far. Then we rose on the back of the
fifth roller, and it set us far before we overtook its crest and
passed it. The sharp bows leapt through the broken water into the
air, and hung for a long moment over the hollow, until the stern
lifted and they were flung forward and downward. Then came a sharp
grating and a little shock, gone almost as it was felt, but it told
of worse to come, maybe. We had felt the ground.

But the next roller hove us forward swiftly, and we hardly overran
it, so that it carried us safely. Now we were so near the shore
that a stone would have reached it, and but two ranks of breakers
were to be passed. I bade my two companions hold on for their
lives, and set my arm round Gerda before the crash should come, and
we lifted to the first of them, but it was almost as swift as we,
and it carried us onward bravely.

Then the keel grated on the ground, and we lost way. The surge
overtook us and drove us forward, crashing on the stones of the
beach, but hardly striking with any force. The bows lifted, and I
saw the rattling pebbles beneath us as the sea sucked them back. A
great sea rolled in, hissing and roaring round the high stern, and
breaking clear over it and Bertric as he stood at the helm, and it
lifted us once more as if we were but a tangle of seaweed, and
hurled us upward on the stony slope, canting the stern round as it
reached us. We were ashore and safely beached, and the danger was
past. The ship took the ground on her whole length as the wave went
back.

Out of the smother of water and foam astern, as the next wave broke
over the ship, Bertric struggled forward to us, laughing as he
came. The sea ran along the deck knee