This, however, they soon found they could not do. The gale had driven them a mile or more down the beach, and they could not force the boat back against it. Light as it was, and floating on the surface of the water like a leaf, it was at the mercy of the wind. In a few moments the two voyagers saw that they were being driven right toward the surf which thundered on the sandy beach. They paddled furiously, trying to keep the bow of the canoe pointed toward the shore, and waited to see what would happen. The great breakers lifted the tiny craft in their arms as though it had been a speck of foam, and hurled it round and round toward the beach. In the twinkling of an eye it was filled with water, upset, and Ma-Ya and his companion were left struggling in the waves. Luckily they were strong and fearless swimmers, and after a long fight, managed to make their way through the surf, almost battered to pieces. The sea folk, who were gathered on the shore watching them, ran down into the water and pulled them up on the beach. The little canoe was washed in and out again for many minutes, rolling over and over in the boiling surf like a huge fish, but at last it too came tumbling upon the sands, crushed and broken. The sea people pulled it up out of reach of the waves, and Ma-Ya gazed at it sadly. He knew now that while his frail craft was good enough for sailing on the river, it would never do for crossing the Great Water. So he made up his mind to think of something else. It was many years before Ma-Ya made his next boat, and this time it was of wood. He knew that the shape of his little canoe had been right, but that to stand the waves of the Great Water it would have to be made of something much stronger and more solid than wicker, covered with skin. The only thing he knew of was wood, yet his brain, which was only just beginning to think, told him no way in which he could make a boat out of wood. One day, while far up the river in a canoe, he came across a huge log, the trunk of a tree, which had been blown down by the wind. It had drifted along the river from the forests above, and finally stuck on a mud-bank, where it was held by its dead branches.