But whatever strength may have been graciously vouchsafed to me that night, I found that I needed it all. The night fell not darkly, but with a clear sky, and the light of stars, and a diffused glimmer from the white crests of the waves. The gale blew right on shore, and the huge roar of the surf thundering in our ears seemed presently to blunt our sense of peril. The great waves now hung above us, white-crested and hissing, till one would have said we were in the very pit of doom. A moment more, and the light craft would seem to soar upward as the wave slipped under it, a wrenching turn of my wrist would drive her on a slant through the curling top of foam, and then we would slide swiftly into the pit again, down a steep slope of purplish blackness all alive with fleeting eyes of white light. The strain upon my wrist, the mighty effort required at each wave lest we should broach to and be rolled over, were something that I had never dreamed to endure. Yet I did endure it. And as for the brave woman in the bow, she simply paddled on, steadily, strongly, without violence, so that I learned to depend on her for just so much force at each swift following crisis. For there was a new crisis every moment,--with a moment's grace as we slipped into each succeeding pit. At last we found ourselves off the cape,--and then well out into the open Strait, yet not engulfed. A little,--just as much as I durst, and that was very little,--I shifted our course toward south. This brought a yet heavier strain upon my wrist, but there was no help for it if we would hope to get beyond the cape. How long we were I know not. I lost the sense of time. I had no faculty left save those that were in service now to battle back destruction. But at last I came to realize that we were well clear of the cape, that the sound of the breakers had dwindled, and that the time had come to turn. To turn? Ay, but could it be done? It could but be tried. To go on thus much longer was, I knew, impossible. My strength would certainly fail by and by. "Comrade," said I,--and my voice sounded strange, as if long unused,--"keep paddling steadily as you are, but the moment I say 'change,' paddle _hard_ on the other side." "Yes, Monsieur!" she answered as quietly as if we had been walking in a garden. I watched the approach of one of those great waves which would, as I knew, have as vast a fellow to follow upon it. As soon as we were well over the crest I began to turn.