He had grasped this much of his new trade when sight seemed to grow misty to him, and his body was chilled with an unpleasant perspiration. It is one thing to take one's regular meals on a fine-sized steamboat, whatever weather may befall; it is quite another to do one's voyaging in a leaping, lancing, dancing, wallowing surf-boat. Few men take their first surf-boat ride over a bad roll without being violently seasick, and Carter was no exception to the normal law. In a hazy sort of way he noted that the paddlers had stopped their song and their monotonous effort, and he was seized with a tremendous desire to hurry them forward and get himself and his gladstone bags planted on the stable beach. Ahead of them were roaring, spouting breakers, which it seemed impossible for any boat to live through; but waiting outside their fringe was even more intolerable. "Oh, get on! For Heaven's sake, get on!" he wanted to shout, but almost to his astonishment pride of race kept him grimly silent. He had never felt before the whole debt that is owing to a white skin. The headman in the stern-sheets sculled now and again with his oar to keep the boat head on to the roll, and between whiles chattered nervously. The Krooboy paddlers on the gunwales rested on their paddles and scratched themselves. Roller after roller went by, flinging the boat up towards heaven, sucking her back again to the sea grass below, with a rocking motion that was horrible beyond belief. Carter felt the color ebb from his cheeks; he wondered with a grisly humor if his head was paling also. But at last the headman delivered himself of a shriek, and a galvanic activity seized the paddlers. They stabbed the water with their trident-shaped blades, and stabbed and stabbed again. The surf-boat was poised on the crest of a great mound of water, and they were straining every sinew to keep her there. But the water motion travelled more swiftly than the clumsy boat. She slid down the slope, still paddling frantically, and the following wave lifted her rudely by the tail. She reared dizzily almost to the vertical, the headman at the apex of the whole structure keeping his perch with an ape's dexterity. She just missed being upset that time, and part of the water which she had shipped was flung over the gunwales as she righted. But she floated there half swamped: labor with what frenzy they choose, the iron-muscled Krooboys could not keep her under command; and the next roller sent the whole company of them flying. There is one piece of advice constantly dinned into a white man's ear on the West Coast. "If in a surf-boat you see the boat boys jump overboard, jump yourself also if you do not wish to have the boat on top of you." Profoundly sound advice it is. But it has the disadvantage of presupposing capability for obedience, and if (as frequently happens) the passenger is dizzy and weak from sudden seasickness, then the leap may be neither prompt nor well-aimed.