Half-Way Rock is a water-washed mass of porphyritic stone, the top about twenty feet above high tide, shaped much like a pyramid, and a few years since was capped with a conical granite beacon, strongly built and riveted down, but which had been two-thirds washed away by the tremendous surf of the easterly storms. The rock stands at the outer edge of a long sand-shoal, and is east of Salem. To the northward, a dim blue line on the horizon, lay Cape Ann, by my reckoning, about eighteen miles distant. I kept on pulling over the swell, which was growing larger, not quite in the trough of the sea,--but when a particularly large wave came easing up a little, so as to take the boat more on the bow, the motion was not a pleasant one. It was a sort of half rolling, half pitching,--very unlike the even, smooth slide of the early part of the afternoon. The rock soon became plainer, and at last I rested on my oars to watch the waves as they broke on its furrowed face. The great rollers, which became higher as the water shoaled toward its foot, fell upon it bursting into foam, and jetting the spray high above the half-broken beacon. It was a beautiful sight as the spray broke under the shadow of the seaward face and was thrown up into the sunlight. Not heeding whither I was drifting, a nasal hail suddenly roused me to the fact that there were other navigators in those seas. "Bo-oat ahoy! Whar' ye bo-ound?" Giving a stroke with the larboard oar, I saw, hove to, a fishing-schooner,--her whole crew of skipper, three men, and a boy standing at the gangway and looking with all their ten eyes to make out, if possible, what strange kind of sea-monster had turned up. My boat could not have seemed very seaworthy, only seven inches above water, disappearing in the trough of every sea that passed, then lifting its long and slender bow of brilliant crimson above the white foam, and the occupant apparently on a level with the water. The hail was repeated. The answer, "Cape Ann," did not satisfy them; and the question, "Wa-ant any he-elp?" was next bawled out. My only reply was by a shake of the head; and settling back into my place, I gave way on the oars, and left my fishing friends still looking and evidently very uncertain whether it were not better to make an attempt at a rescue.