"And there, above the low-lying wisps of morning fog, stood three
peaks: two sharp and the third blunted: and, below the fog, ran a
thin white ribbon of breaking water!
"We had run down upon it so close in those hours of darkness that the
beat of the surf had, as I now recognised, confused itself into
Santa's last breathings: so close that, as the sun took swift mastery
of the mist and dissolved it, disclosing, below the peaks, the
variegated greenery of lawn and forest pouring down to the seamed
cliffs and pouring over them to the very beaches in tapestries of
vines and creepers, we were almost in the ring of the surf: and it
came as a shock to me that the lazy swell on which we had so long
lifted and dropped, heeding it least among many threats, could beat
on this islet so terrifically.
"The sight so vanquished Farrell that he yielded the stick over to
me, obedient as a child. I thrust it back in its socket, hauled
sheet and fetched her up close to the wind outside the surges. . . .
Without a word said, he turned to pointing out this and that inlet
between the reefs where there seemed a chance to slip through.
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