A shout came to me, pitching and lurching with the boat far below, “Come on board at once.” But to come on board was only to be done by watching a chance as the boat rose on the top of a roller. Taking such a one, I seized the side-ropes, swung a moment in mid-air, and the next was on the streamer’s clean white deck. Before me stood a tall man with black hair and whiskers and dark piercing eyes, who asked me if I was the agent for Flint Brothers. I answered that the agent was on shore, and that I was his assistant. Whereupon he informed me that he had been appointed by the firm to liquidate all their stations and businesses on the coast, and “he would be obliged by my getting his luggage into the boat.” This was said in a peremptory sort of way, as if he had spoken to a servant; and very much against the grain I obeyed his orders. That the man was new to the coast was evident, and my consolation was that he would be very soon sick of it and pretty well frightened before he even got on shore, for the weather was freshening rapidly, a fact of which he appeared to take no heed. Not so the boat-boys, who were anxious to be off. At last we started, and I soon had my revenge. As we drew near the shore the rollers became higher and higher, and I perceived that my gentleman clutched the gunwale of the boat very tightly, and when the first wave that showed signs of breaking overtook us, he grew very white in the face until it had passed. The next one or two breakers were small, much to his relief I could see, though he said nothing. Before he had well recovered his equanimity, however, a tremendous wave approached us somewhat suddenly. Appalled by its threatening aspect, he sprang from his seat and seized the arm of the patrao, who roughly shook him off. “My God!” he cried, “we are swamped!” and for the moment it really looked like it; but the patrao, with a dexterous sweep of his long oar, turned the boat’s head toward the roller. It broke just as it reached us, and gave us the benefit of its crest, which came in over the topsides of the boat as it passed by, and deluged every one of us.