We really thought, at first, that our messenger must have been drowned even in crossing the inner bar, for we well-nigh lost sight of him in the hissing yeast of waves in which he and his catamaran appeared only at intervals, tossing about like a cork.  But by far the most difficult part of his task remained after he had reached the comparatively smooth space between the two lines of surf, where we could observe him paddling to and fro as if in search of an opening in the moving wall of water raging between him and the roadstead.  He was watching for a favourable moment, when, after the dash of some high wave, he might hope to make good his transit in safety.

After allowing a great many seas to break before he attempted to cross the outer bar, he at length seized the proper moment, and turning his little bark to seaward, paddled out as fast as he could.  Just as the gallant fellow, however, reached the shallowest part of the bar, and we fancied him safely across, a huge wave, which had risen with unusual quickness, elevated its foaming crest right before him, curling upwards many feet higher than his shoulders.  In a moment he cast away his paddle, and leaping on his feet, he stood erect on his catamaran, watching with a bold front the advancing bank of water.  He kept his position, quite undaunted, till the steep face of the breaker came within a couple of yards of him, and then leaping head foremost, he pierced the wave in a horizontal direction with the agility and confidence of a dolphin.  We had scarcely lost sight of his feet, as he shot through the heart of the wave, when such a dash took place as must have crushed him to pieces had he stuck by his catamaran, which was whisked instantly afterwards, by a kind of somerset, completely out of the water by its rebounding off the sandbank.  On casting our eyes beyond the surf, we felt much relieved by seeing our shipwrecked friend merrily dancing on the waves at the back of the surf, leaping more than breast-high above the surface, and looking in all directions, first for his paddle, and then for his catamaran.  Having recovered his oar, he next swam, as he best could, through the broken surf to his raft, mounted it like a hero, and once more addressed himself to his task.

By this time, as the current always runs fast along the shore, he had drifted several hundred yards to the northward farther from his point.  At the second attempt to penetrate the surf, he seemed to have made a small miscalculation, for the sea broke so very nearly over him, before he had time to quit his catamaran and dive into still water, that we thought he must certainly have been drowned.  Not a whit, however, did he appear to have suffered, for we soon saw him again swimming to his rude vessel.  Many times in succession was he thus washed off and sent whirling towards the beach, and as often obliged to dive head foremost through the waves.  But at last, after very nearly an hour of incessant struggling, and the loss of more than a mile of distance, he succeeded, for the first time, in reaching the back of the surf, without having parted company either with his paddle or with his catamaran.  After this it became all plain sailing; he soon paddled off to the Roads, and placed the Admiral’s letter in the first lieutenant’s hands as dry as if it had been borne in a despatch-box across the court-yard of the Admiralty.