I swam on, and now at the crests of the swells I could see the waves breaking ahead of me. As each wave broke water sucked over the back of it like it was the edge of the world; white water exploded into the fog, and the whole churning mass tumbled in to the beach. There was going to be a problem getting to shore.
The swells kept pushing me in until one larger than the rest picked me up and carried me along with it, getting steeper and steeper as it went along. I was caught under the crest, and slowly it dawned on me that it was going to pitch over and throw me with it. I took a deep breath and plunged into the wave, felt it pulling me up as I struggled through the thick lip and out the back side. Even so I was almost taken over the back of the break, and into the churning soup. The next swell was nearly as big, and I had to swim as fast as I could to get over it before it broke. I breasted its top while it stood vertical, and looked back down at the foam-streaked water some fifteen feet below. Had that black area down there been rock? Was there a reef under me?
Whimpering miserably I swam out a good distance, so I wouldn’t get caught inside by a wave bigger than the two that had almost drowned me. The idea of a reef was horrifying. I was too tired for such a thing, I wanted to swim straight in to the beach. It was so close. It was possible that what I had seen was a patch of black water in the foam, but I couldn’t be sure, and if I was wrong I would pay for it with my life. I treaded water for a time and studied the waves as they broke and sucked water over behind them. The place where they consistently broke first marked the shallowest water, and if there were rocks they probably were there. So I swam parallel to the beach a ways, to the spot where the waves consistently broke last. The cold was in my thoughts again, and my fear grew. I decided to start in.
I attended to the swells, because if a wave broke before it reached me, it would roll me under and never let me up. No, I needed to catch a wave and ride it in, just like we did for fun in the waves off Onofre. If I caught one right, I might take it all the way onto the sand. That was what I wanted. I needed a big wave—not too big, though: medium big. Waves usually came in sets of threes, a big one followed by two littler ones, but floating over them in the dark I couldn’t get any sense of that. Looking back and forth I accidentally swallowed a mouthful of water, and it almost sent me to the bottom. I saw I couldn’t afford to be picky, and I struck out backstroking, determined to catch the very next wave. If I ran into rocks that would be it, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to take the chance.
As a swell picked me up I suddenly didn’t feel tired at all, though I still couldn’t swim well. I turned on my stomach as the wave tilted my feet up, and swam for it. What I would have given for a pair of Tom’s fins, kicking as I was to match the growing speed of the wave! But I caught it anyway, just, and felt it pick me up and carry me along. I was high on the steep face as it pitched over, so that I dropped through the air and smacked my chest into the water. If it had been reef that would have been the end of me, but it wasn’t, and I skidded over the water at the front edge of the broken wave, my head alone out of the white water, barreling over the suds at a tremendous speed.
The wave petered out too soon, however, and left me gasping in the soup. I stood and felt for the bottom—no bottom—sank, and hit sand with my feet almost immediately. I pushed back to the surface and saw another wave steaming in. Rolling myself into a ball I let the wave tumble me shoreward—a standard body surfing trick, but one inappropriate to my weakness. I barely struggled back to the surface when my forward motion stopped. But now I could stand, heaving, on good smooth sand! Walking cramped my legs and I collapsed. All of the water that had been pushed onto the beach by the last few waves chose that moment to sluice back down, and I knelt and clawed the coarse flowing sand as the torrent rushed over me. Then it was past, and I hobbled out of the water.
As soon as I got up the steep wash and beyond the high water mark, I fell down. The beach was covered with a gritty layer of melting hail. My stomach muscles relaxed at last, and I started to throw up. I had swallowed more water than I knew, and it took a while to get it all out. I didn’t mind. It was the most triumphant retching I ever did.
I had made it. All well and good. But there was no chance to celebrate, because now there was a new set of problems. The snowing had stopped for a moment, but there was still a wind which cut me most distinctly. I crawled up the beach to the cliff backing it. Narrow beach, cliff three times my height—it could have been anywhere on the Pendleton shore. At the base of the cliff there was less wind, and I hunkered down behind a sandstone boulder, among other clumps of fallen cliff. I started wiping myself dry with my fingers, and while doing that looked around.
Out to sea moonlit clouds obscured the view. The beach stretched away in both directions, covered by black blobs of seaweed. I was beginning to shiver. One of the blobs of seaweed had a more regular shape than the rest. Standing up to look at it better I felt the onshore wind blow right through me. Still, that clump of weed—I stumbled around my boulder and walked toward it, being careful not to hurry and fall.
A break I had not noticed in the cliff was the mouth of a deep ravine, spilling its creek onto the beach to cut through the sand to the sea. I sat and slid down the sloping sand to the creek, stopping to drink some of its water—I was thirsty, strangely enough. When I stood again it was a struggle to make my way up the three foot embankment on the other side; I kept slipping, and finally, cursing and sniffling, I had to crawl up it and then stand.
Back on the plateau of the beach I could see the black blob clearly, and my suspicion was confirmed. It was a boat, pulled almost to the cliff. “Oh, yes,” I said. Careful not to hurry, I thought, you’ll fall. It was farther away than it looked, but at last I staggered to its side, and sat in the lee of it. Held the gunwale with my numb hands.
There were two oars in it and nothing else, so there was no way to be positive, but I was sure it was the dinghy we had been trailing behind our sloop. They had made it to shore! Tom was (most likely) alive!
I, on the other hand, was nearly dead. Presumably my companions were somewhere in the area—up the ravine was a good guess—but I couldn’t follow them. I was too weak and cold to stand. In fact my head banged the dinghy’s side while I was just sitting there. I knew I was in bad shape. I didn’t want to die after taking the trouble to swim all that way, so I got to my knees. Too bad they hadn’t left something in the boat besides the oars. Since they hadn’t… I considered it at a snail’s pace, as if very drunk. “Should get… out of… the wind… yeah.” I crawled to a big clump of seaweed and pulled off the top layers. They were all tangled and didn’t want to come. I got angry—“Stupid seaweed, let loose!”—blubbering like that until I got to the middle of the clump, which was still dry. Dryness felt like warmth. I pulled as many of the black leafy strands as I could carry out of the clump, and staggered back to the boat with them. Dropped the weed.
I pushed at the side of the dinghy. It might as well have been set in stone. I groaned. Pushing on the gunwale I could rock it a bit. “Turn over, boat.” I was amazed and frightened by my lack of strength; normally I could have flipped that dinghy with one hand. Now it became the great struggle of my life to overturn the damn thing. I got out the oars, slid one under the keel, lifted the wide end, and balanced it on the handle end of the other one, which had its wide end jammed in the sand. That tilted the boat, and on the other side I stepped on the low gunwale and pulled at the high one, all at once and with all my might. The boat flipped and I had to fall away from it flat on my face to avoid being crushed.