None of them knew the colour of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the of , save for the tops, which were of white, and all of the men knew the colours of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.  
Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat navigation.
 
The cook in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest as he to out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed over the broken sea.
 
The oiler, with one of the two in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that in over the stern. It was a thin little and it seemed often ready to snap.
 
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there.
 
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a of a top-mast with a white ball on it that to and fro at the waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was deep with mourning, and of a quality beyond or tears.
 
"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.
 
"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.
 
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a broncho, and, by the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft and reared, and like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence high. The manner of her over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in white water, the down from the summit of each wave, requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a , she would slide, and race, and splash down a long incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.
 
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in a dingey. As each wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the waves, and they came in silence, save for the of the .
 
In the light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyes must have glinted in strange ways as they gazed astern. Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would doubtlessly have been . But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun swung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because the colour of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, with lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect upon the colour of the waves that rolled toward them.
 
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the difference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cook had said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat and pick us up."
 
"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent.
 
"The crew," said the cook.
 
"Houses of refuge don't have crews," said the correspondent. "As I understand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are stored for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews."
 
"Oh, yes, they do," said the cook.
 
"No, they don't," said the correspondent.
 
"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow," said the oiler, in the stern.
 
"Well," said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'm thinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a life-saving station."
 
"We're not there yet," said the oiler, in the stern.