The big seas were rolling up from the equator, and we could hear them booming in on the coast-line.
As I look back on that nightmare off the bars of San Apusa I think the day when I went down with the anchor was the calmest day of our stay. With the everlasting thrust of the trades behind them the billows rolled, rolled, rolled, rolled—seethed and surged—giant green soldiers with the white plumes, charging that sandy shore. I got to feel after a time that they were soldiers in real earnest, and that they were after me—poor little midget, who was trying to accomplish the impossible.
At breakfast Mr. Shank ventured to remark politely and somewhat nervously that he was supposing I would not try to go down that day.
And I told Mr. Shank rather brusquely that of course I should go down, and added that if we were to wait for smooth water in soundings on the lee shore of the Pacific Ocean in the season of the trades, we should have brought plenty of knitting-work and novels.
Captain Holstrom, from the head of the table, smiled and winked at me with the most cordial expression I had ever seen on his face. I decided that one of my partners was regarding me in a more amiable frame of mind than he had before I had made that little speech to him. Mr. Keedy scowled at me, and I was glad of that mark of his continued disesteem. It occurred to me that perhaps I was weaning the captain from Keedy, for Holstrom snapped his friend up rather short two or three times during the meal.
I went down that day with more weights. The tug of those rollers inshore was tremendous for a buoyant man, even in the comparative calm of the previous day. I realized what I would meet up with this day, and I was not disappointed in my reckoning.
I was tumbled from hummock to hummock of the submarine sand-bars. I was knocked down and then was stood up once more. Sometimes I was lifted off my feet, and then I was rolled and pressed down and pinned to the sand till it seemed that I would never get on my feet again. Part of the time I was thrust ahead as if the Pacific were trying to make me walk Spanish—and then I was yanked backward on all-fours like a big crab.
I knew a whole lot about undertows, and I realized that I was having an experience with a particularly crazy one.
Men who have observed and studied think they have a pretty good line on the notions and the moods of the sea—but take it from me as a submarine diver, they haven’t. If one is standing on a rock and looking out on it, or sailing across it in a safe boat, the ocean becomes a matter of “beautiful surf,” or an expanse more or less hubbly with waves.
But get down into it—get down deep where it can play with you, twirl you, toss you, suck your breath, provided it can throttle your air-hose—where it can work all its schemes and its spite. You will find out that the ocean has a new trick for every day.