Good Heavens, how it blew!  The waters seemed alive and in direst convulsion.  Everywhere huge walls of breakers were constantly upheaved to be felled and shattered with a roar as of some terrific cannonade; while the air became the arena for a helter-skelter tossing of sheets of spray, clots of froth, and spirts of brine, which plentifully assailed our poor boat in their madness, and, besides partially filling her with slush, encased every man in a complete coating of ice.  If our craft had not been modeled with the very highest degree of skill, and if our steersman had not been one of a thousand, we could have made no headway at all in this appalling tumult.  As it was, our advance was of the weakest, and its success seemed very doubtful, let our efforts be what they might.  Not but what we could sufficiently hold our own in the swirl of the vanquished waves; but when they swooped upon us in their full stature, they not only sent the boat back as if she had been a mere feather, but with a second’s awkwardness on the part of old Bill they would have flung her clean over from stem to stern, and our places among the living would have been vacant.  Having strained every nerve for nearly two hours, we were still but part way through the breakers, while some of the men began to complain of fatigue; with which old Bill seized a favorable opportunity to put the boat about, and we were swept ashore on the beach as in the twinkling of an eye.  Here, we secured our boat by hauling her high and dry on the strand; freed her from the slush and water which had gained in her bottom; and then retired to the leeward of a range of sand hills near by, to recruit our energies.

With full leisure to ponder over the difficulties confronting our expedition, some few of the crew now began to ‘speak it foully,’ and even to emit gruff proposals to return homewards.  But to these waverers old Bill at once administered the sternest rebuke; and, as they at last held their peace, he averred with a gay smile (for he dearly loved the presence of danger, and could never be brought to look on it other than as a rough sort of irresponsible horse-play, over which he was sure in one way or another to gain the mastery), that he had now weighed all the conditions of the pass, and that the next time we attempted it we should assuredly prevail.  This assertion, coming from such a source, encouraged one and all very greatly; and ere long we cheerfully launched our boat once more, and again began to tug at the quivering oars.  In a very little while it became apparent enough that the tactics that Bill intended to adopt in our present venture were very different from those put in practice with the last.  Instead of boldly facing the breakers as he had heretofore done, he now began his maneuvering by laying us directly in the trough of the sea,—­planting the boat a little crosswise, however, so as to prevent an untoward swell from riding over her side and thus filling her,—­and the instant he saw an advancing breaker beginning