Out There In The Midst Of Such A Succession Of Big Smoky Ones, A
Third Man Was Added To Our Party, One Freeth.
Shaking the water
from my eyes as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what
the next one looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it,
standing upright on his board, carelessly poised, a young god
bronzed with sunburn.
We went through the wave on the back of which
he rode. Ford called to him. He turned an airspring from his wave,
rescued his board from its maw, paddled over to us and joined Ford
in showing me things. One thing in particular I learned from
Freeth, namely, how to encounter the occasional breaker of
exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers were really
ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the board. But
Freeth showed me, so that whenever I saw one of that calibre rolling
down on me, I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped down
beneath the surface, my arms over my head and holding the board.
Thus, if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to
strike me with it (a common trick of such waves), there would be a
cushion of water a foot or more in depth, between my head and the
blow. When the wave passed, I climbed upon the board and paddled
on. Many men have been terribly injured, I learn, by being struck
by their boards.
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