Kendrick stared at the delicate-looking craft and answered, “Well, if you asked me if I thought I could swim over Niagara Falls without inconvenience, I should about as soon say ‘yes.’”
Evans laughed. “Oh, it isn’t as bad as that. I’ve a friend who used to play in that kayak by the hour in the ocean surf where it breaks on outlying ledges, just for the fun of it, and I’ve done it more or less myself. I’ll teach you the game; I expect we shall want you to do something like that pretty soon. It’s surprising how little violence there is in big waves if you float freely on them in a small boat. A tennis ball suffers little violence in a sea that pounds a battleship with a stress measured in tons. It’s only rough if you resist it. If you stay just outside where the waves actually break, their motion is all up and down; you can sit there at your leisure and study the situation farther in. Let me show you how it works. I’ll paddle round the point to where there’s a moderate sea breaking; you can follow along the shore and see for yourself how simple it is.”
So saying he launched the kayak and paddled out round the rocky point to where he felt the heave of the ocean swell. Kendrick followed along the shore watching him curiously. Evans paddled close to the shore keeping just where the waves curled up before they broke on the rocks. Presently he found a place to his liking and, turning the bow of the kayak toward the shore, rested as he studied the action of the breaking waves between him and Kendrick, who stood watching from a high rock just above. Some thirty feet from the actual shore line was a barrier of rock, the highest part of which rose clear above the water, while even the lowest part was barely uncovered in the trough of the largest waves. Over this ledge the seas broke, each wave sending a torrent of frothy water into the deeper pool beyond, which seethed like a cauldron streaked with shifting patterns of foam; and as each wave receded another torrent would flow out over the ledge till, balked by the crest of an incoming wave, it was lost in a smother of white foam. As the kayak rose and fell on the waves, its pointed bow barely beyond the edge of this dangerous-looking reef, Kendrick wondered that it was not caught by the inward rush of water and dashed on the rocks. Presently, just as a good-sized wave came rolling in and curled right under the kayak before breaking, he saw Evans give a few quick strokes which carried him forward on the crest of the wave. It broke, and in the midst of the great mass of white water pouring in over the ledge came the kayak, floating lightly till well within the pool where on the agitated waters she bobbed up and down like an eggshell, while Evans rested his paddle on the cockpit combing as if taking his ease on a millpond. Then looking at the shore line he chose a gently sloping shelf of rock which was half-submerged when the pool was filled by the larger waves, but which each receding wave left bare, and, paddling swiftly forward on the crest of a large wave, grounded, and thrusting his paddle firmly into a niche in the rock held himself there as the water poured back off the shelf. Then, jumping out, he seized the kayak and ran with it up to the dry rocks above without even wetting his feet.
Sitting down beside Kendrick who felt as if some miracle had brought him safely ashore, he said: “You see, if you find a place like this it really isn’t hard at all; and you can almost always find a place as good as this, if you hunt for it. The main thing to remember is that the waves aren’t all alike. Sometimes a small wave will recede so quickly that you’ll be caught on the rocks just when you think you’re going over them. You must take your time and watch a lot of them till you know what sort of thing they do; then choose your wave as you see it coming.”
“I suppose you’ll want to take the boat back overland,” said Kendrick. “You couldn’t very well get out again through that, could you?”
“Quite easily,” said Evans. “I’ll show you how that works. After a big wave there’s a lot of water going out, enough to float you over the ledge.”
“But wouldn’t the next wave coming in swamp you?”
“Not at all. That’s the beauty of a decked-in boat like this. It doesn’t matter if she buries her nose well under water, she’ll ship very little over the cockpit combing. Another thing—the main secret of her seaworthiness is the fact that you sit in the bottom; your center of gravity is so low that you have enormous stability. Big waves can break on you broadside without tipping you over. If you watch her closely and see how she behaves in breaking waves for a while, you’ll get the idea of the thing better than I can tell it to you.”
So saying, Evans carried the kayak down to his landing-place on the sloping shelf, and, watching his chance, put her down as a wave receded, climbed in, and waited for another to come and float him off. On the next large wave, foamy and tumultuous though it was, he floated gently off the rock and shoved himself out into deep water. Kendrick watched intently as he paddled out till the bow of the kayak was just over the inner edge of the rocky barrier. A big wave came rushing in and as it broke seemed to engulf the sharp bow of the kayak, then lifted it high into the air as if to turn her over backwards and throw her across the pool. But instead she rose gracefully as the crest passed under her, and the next moment Evans was paddling her swiftly into the stream of water already starting to pour out over the ledge. Gliding smoothly out, he plunged into the next wave just as it broke on the outer edge of the reef, and almost disappeared from view in the white froth. But again the kayak rose as the crest passed under her, and now she was riding like a duck on the heaving waters beyond the reef. Several times Evans rode this buoyant craft in and out of the pool in order to familiarize Kendrick with her behavior under such conditions, and incidentally, it must be admitted, for the sport of the thing. Then he paddled back round the point to the hiding-place of the kayak, where he explained to Kendrick what he was there for.
“We want you to go to Gibraltar,” he said. “And the quickest way of getting you there from here unobserved seems to be to have you land in this thing somewhere near Cape Trafalgar. You can’t land where there are people; that’s why it has to be on an exposed coast instead of a snug harbor, although you might work the mouth of a small stream. I suppose you can manage to get to Gibraltar without exciting suspicion, once you get ashore, can’t you?”