To be a good swimmer was everything at Carn Du. They looked upon it as a business—as part of their education—for no boy or man was counted fit to go out in a boat who could not leap overboard and swim alongside, or, during a capsize, keep himself afloat, and help to turn the boat and bale her out.
But from the meanest to the best swimmer there, every one paused to watch Mark Penelly standing statue-like up against the black rock, waiting till a great ninth wave came majestically rolling in, sweeping over the outer rocks—the Shangles—and then with a boom leaping at Carn Du, running up it, as it were, in a mighty column of water, some twenty feet even on a calm day.
Now was the time, calculated by practised eyes to the moment.
As the wave struck, Mark could be seen to grow suddenly less statuesque. His arms would drop to his side, and then as it rushed up towards where he stood, like some mighty sea-monster seeking to make him its prey, Mark’s hands joined above his head, he bent forward slightly, and then with one tremendous leap seemed to leave the rocky ledge, and plunge down head foremost into the wave.
The effect was electric, but its daring seemed to savour of madness. There one moment stood the statuesque figure, white as a cameo cut in the black rock, the next moment there was a gleam of something flashing through the air, and passing into the deep blue wave, which, as if by the contact of the figure, broke into silvery foam, rushing back like a vast cascade towards the Shangles.
Where all before was smooth heaving water all was now rushing foam, as the broken wave raced back, as if to pass between two narrow jagged pieces of rock rising up like a gateway some fifty yards away before the next wave came in.
The breath of the person who saw it for the first time was held as he looked in vain for the brave diver, or wondered whether the act he had seen was not some mad effort to destroy life. There was the foaming water, there the black rocks, that were swept over by the roaring wave, but now showing plainly amidst a sheet of white surf, with beyond them a comparatively smooth surface, through which a current seems to run.
But there was no diver to be seen, nothing but the racing, hissing foam.
Yes: there he was—that was his head, rising out of the foam thirty or forty yards away, and being carried to inevitable destruction against those terrible jagged rocks.
No man could swim against the furious, racing torrent which was now passing between them. No one could get out of such a current when once in. It was horrible to look at, for the helpless swimmer seemed as if he would be dashed against the crags and then float, stunned, wounded, and helpless, out to sea.