The plank was almost twisted from his grasp, but he clung to it desperately, although its edges tore his arms.  When the rollers broke over him he held his breath, and when he was tossed skywards on their curves, drew it again in quick, sweet gasps.  Now he sat upon the very brow of one of them as a merman might; now he dived like a dolphin, and now, just as his senses were leaving him, his feet touched bottom.  Another moment and Robert was being rolled along that bottom with a weight on him like the weight of mountains.  The plank was rent from him, but his cork jacket brought him up.  The backwash drew him with it into deeper water, where he lay helpless and despairing, for he no longer had any strength to struggle against his doom.

Then it was that there came a mighty roller, bigger than any that he had seen—­such a one as on that coast the Kaffirs call “a father of waves.”  It caught him in the embrace of its vast green curve.  It bore him forward as though he were but a straw, far forward over the stretch of cruel rocks.  It broke in thunder, dashing him again upon the stones and sand of the little river bar, rolling him along with its resistless might, till even that might was exhausted, and its foam began to return seawards, sucking him with it.

Robert’s mind was almost gone, but enough of it remained to tell him that if once more he was dragged into the deep water he must be lost.  As the current haled him along he gripped at the bottom with his hands, and by the mercy of Heaven they closed on something.  It may have been a tree-stump embedded there, or a rock—­he never knew.  At least, it was firm, and to it he hung despairingly.  Would that rush never cease?  His lungs were bursting; he must let go!  Oh! the foam was thinning; his head was above it now; now it had departed, leaving him like a stranded fish upon the shingle.  For half a minute or more he lay there gasping, then looked behind him to see another comber approaching through the gloom.  He struggled to his feet, fell, rose again, and ran, or rather, staggered forward with that tigerish water hissing at his heels.  Forward, still forward, till he was beyond its reach—­yes, on dry sand.  Then his vital forces failed him; one of his legs gave way, and, bleeding from a hundred hurts, he fell heavily onto his face, and there was still.

The boat in which Benita lay, being so deep in the water, proved very hard to row against the tide, for the number of its passengers encumbered the oarsmen.  After a while a light off land breeze sprang up, as here it often does towards morning; and the officer, Thompson, determined to risk hoisting the sail.  Accordingly this was done—­with some difficulty, for the mast had to be drawn out and shipped—­although the women screamed as the weight of the air bent their frail craft over till the gunwale was almost level with the water.

“Anyone who moves shall be thrown overboard!” said the officer, who steered, after which they were quiet.