d causing my body to glow like
white-hot steel! A big, glassy mound of swell came creeping along
toward the felucca, and, as she rolled toward it, curled in over her
covering-board and poured in a heavy torrent across her deck, swirling
round my raft and shifting it a foot or two nearer the side; and as it
swept past I dabbled one of my hands in it, and was dully surprised that
the contact did not cause the water to hiss and boil! Another mountain
of water came brimming over the deck of the shuddering craft and shifted
the raft so far that it fairly overhung the covering-board, so that when
the felucca rolled in the opposite direction the end of the raft not
only dipped in the water but actually lifted and floated, the heave of
the water sucking it perhaps another foot off the deck. The next two or
three undulations passed harmlessly by,--the swing and roll of the
felucca was such that she just happened to meet them at the right
moment, though lagging a little at the last,--and then came another
great liquid hill, towering high above the horizon, until the sinking
sun was utterly obscured. On it swept toward the felucca, which had now
slewed so that she faced the coming swell nearly stem-on, the water in
her meanwhile rushing forward as she sank down into the trough until her
stem-head was completely buried. Now she was meeting the breast of the
on-coming swell, her bows still pinned down by the rush of water in her
interior, and now the glistening green wave was upon her, sweeping aft
along and athwart her deck, mounting over the coamings of the main
hatchway and pouring down the opening in a smooth, hissing, four-sided
cataract, snatching up the raft in its embrace and shooting it half a
dozen fathoms clear of the doomed craft, and rushing along the deck
until even the companion and the skylight were submerged. By that time
the hull was full, the curious rectangular hollow in the surface of the
water that marked the position of the main hatchway was filled, the hull
was completely hidden save for a splintered stanchion that projected
above water here and there. Then, as the wave passed, the bows of the
felucca emerged, gleaming and dripping with snowy, foaming cascades,
that poured off the uncovered portion of the deck. Higher and higher
rose the bows out of the water, until some ten feet in length of the
felucca was revealed, the deck gradually sloping until it assumed an
almost perpendicular inclination, when