that a new departure must be made. For a heavy surf
was breaking on the shore which they were approaching, that ran off
shallow for half a mile. There was not water enough to let the boat
approach the land, and they realized that they had not sufficient
strength left to walk through the breakers. Yet struggle as they
would, the best they could do was to keep the boat very slightly
across the wind.

John maintains now that it was the direct intervention of Providence
which spared them just when once more all hope seemed over. They
suddenly noticed that while still forging shorewards they were also
drifting rapidly into the bay. It was the first uprush of the strong
rising tide, and they might yet be carried to a deep-water landing.
The play of hope and fear made the remaining hours an agony of
suspense. What would be the end of it all seemed a mere gamble. Every
mark on the approaching shore was now familiar to them. It had become,
they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting
boat would touch the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should
clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any
one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would
be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a
little later it became obvious that she would clear the sands.

Now the rocky headland, round which their winter house stood, was
coming rapidly into view. As the mouth of the bay narrowed, the pace
of the current increased, and for a time they seemed to be hopelessly
rushing past their one hope of landing. The excitement and the
exertion of putting might and main into the oars had made them almost
forget the wet and cold and darkness, now only relieved by the last
afterglow of the setting sun. But it all appeared of no avail; they
were still some hundred yards off as they passed the point. It might
as well have been some hundred miles, for they drifted helplessly into
the bay, which was widening out again.

Despair, however, still failed to grip them, and apparently
hopelessly they kept toiling on at the sweeps. Once more a miracle
happened, and they were really apparently approaching the point a
second time. The very violence of the tide had actually saved them,
creating as it did a strong eddy, which with the little aid from the
oars, bore them now steadily toward the land. Nearer and nearer they
came. They were half a mile inside the head. Only