The Duke's Sweetheart: A Romance

by Richard Dowling

He first of all resolved to look into the opening. He waited until the water had rushed through, then swam in front of it, and looked in. He was a much bigger man than Bence, and the first thought which occurred to him was, could he squeeze himself through? At a mere glance it appeared as if he could not; but upon a closer examination and reflection, he came to the conclusion that the passage was at least four feet wide, and almost of a uniform width. He waited to see the bore coming, and then, with a few vigorous strokes, put himself once more under the shelter of the rock.

Owing to his enormous chest capacity, Cheyne swam very high, and in sea-water he could move about with almost as much ease as on land. In the deep water under the rocks the sinker on the line, even if it hung perpendicular under him, would not touch the bottom, and consequently impeded his swimming only by its weight in water, which was, of course, much less than its weight in air. But there were only two fathoms of water in the cleft; and if he entered the channel towing that leaded line after him, the chance was it would get jambed somewhere, and he should be obliged to turn back, or come back somehow, turning being out of the question on account of the narrowness of the place, in order to free the sinker.

Remembering the free way in which the line had been paid out, and the fact that the sinker was now almost perpendicular under him, he concluded that the whole of the line now run out was far below the influence of the bores. These were not, by-the-way, real bores, but the term fitted them better than any other in the language.

When the next wave had gone by, Cheyne seized the edge of the passage, and catching the line in his feet and left hand, began drawing it up. At the approach of a second wave he was obliged to desist, but before a third was upon him he had the lead in his left hand, and was tearing it off with his teeth.

He had also another object in drawing the slack of that line. It was more than advisable that he should take with him into that cleft as much of the rope as would reach through; for if he had to overcome the friction between the line and the corner of the passage, his progress would be very much slower than if he could pay out as he went. Therefore, while treading the water in the slack, he made a small coil of about fifty feet of rope. He could swim with his right hand and legs.

Everything was now ready; and having waited his time, he filled his chest, threw back his head, and struck out for the opening.

The place looked forbidding. But its narrowness was greatly in the swimmer's favour. If it had been five feet wider, no man in his senses would have dared to enter it at such a time; but because of its narrowness there was only one point to expect motion from, namely, ahead. When the bore had swept through, the water was calm; there was no room for perturbation; and in so narrow a place, where one could touch both sides with hands and feet, there was not much chance of being dashed against the side.

Cheyne had, like Bence, resolved to dive under the bore. But he did not forget, what Bence had forgotten, that beneath the surface of the present smooth water the bore would rush with as much fury as in the body of the bore itself. This was not like a wave which moves with only the force of its undulation, and which has no more lateral power than its onward tidal force.

It is not the lateral force of the sea that beats the beams out of ships, and tears away the most enduring walls of man and the adamantine barriers of nature. It is the shoulder of the wave that gets under the ships and the walls and the cliffs, and pushes them to destruction. At sea we never find the water flying up into the air; of its own accord the water would not leave the cradle in lies in. It is only when it meets with an obstacle and is broken that it deserts its own bed. Then, being broken and weak, it is caught by the wind, and flung over the rocks and cliffs in spray.

But in the case of the passage in which Cheyne now found himself, it was quite different. Into this entered a new body of water, a perpendicular section of a wave which had been torn from the general body of water, and as a projectile blown through this opening by the wind.