The wind was falling,
but a mighty sea was still thundering in on Berande beach, the flying
spray reaching in as far as the flagstaff mounds, the foaming wash
creaming against the gate-posts. He had taken thirty grains of quinine,
and the drug was buzzing in his ears like a nest of hornets, making his
hands and knees tremble, and causing a sickening palpitation of the
stomach. Once, opening his eyes, he saw what he took to be an
hallucination. Not far out, and coming in across the _Jessie's_
anchorage, he saw a whale-boat's nose thrust skyward on a smoky crest and
disappear naturally, as an actual whale-boat's nose should disappear, as
it slid down the back of the sea. He knew that no whale-boat should be
out there, and he was quite certain no men in the Solomons were mad
enough to be abroad in such a storm.
But the hallucination persisted. A minute later, chancing to open his
eyes, he saw the whale-boat, full length, and saw right into it as it
rose on the face of a wave. He saw six sweeps at work, and in the stern,
clearly outlined against the overhanging wall of white, a man who stood
erect, gigantic, swaying with his weight on the steering-sweep. This he
saw, and an eighth man who crouched in the bow and gazed shoreward. But
what startled Sheldon was the sight of a woman in the stern-sheets,
between the stroke-oar and the steersman.
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