Another wave gripped him and rushed him shoreward again. The thunder of the surf redoubled. “Hi! hi! hi! hi!” screeched the storm-tossed gulls. Number Three of the midship gun abandoned his efforts to swim and covered his face with his soggy sleeve. It was well not to look ahead. The wave seemed to be carrying him towards the cliffs at the speed of an express train. He wondered if the rocks would hurt much, beating out his life.... He tried desperately to remember a prayer, but all he could recall was a sermon he had once listened to on the quarter-deck, one drowsy summer morning at Malta.... About coming to Jesus on the face of the waters.... “And Jesus said ‘come.’ ...” Fair whizzing along, he was.... Again the wave spent itself, and the man was caught in the backwash, drawn under, rolled over and over, spun round and round, gathered up in the watery embrace of another roller and flung up on all fours on a shelving beach. Furiously he clawed at the retreating pebbles, lurched to his feet, staggered forward a couple of paces, and fell on hands and knees on the fringe of a snow-drift. There he lay awhile, panting for breath. He was conscious of an immense amazement, and, mingled with it, an inexplicable pride. He was still alive! It was an astounding achievement, being the solitary survivor of all those officers and men. But he had always considered himself a bit out of the ordinary.... Once he had entered for a race at the annual sports at the Naval Barracks, Devonport. He had never run a race before in his life, and he won. It seemed absurdly easy. “Bang!” went the pistol: off they went, helter-skelter, teeth clenched, fists clenched, hearts pounding, spectators a blur, roaring encouragement.... He won, and experienced the identical astonished gratification that he felt now. “You runs like a adjective ’are, Bill,” his chum had admitted, plying the hero with beer at the little pub halfway up the cobbled hill by the dockyard. Then he remembered other chums, shipmates, and one in particular called Nobby. He rose into a sitting position, staring seaward. Through the gloom the tumult of the seas, breaking over the reef on which they had foundered, glimmered white. The man rose unsteadily to his feet; he was alone on the beach of a tiny cove with his back to forbidding cliffs. Save where his own footsteps showed black, the snow was unmarked, stretching in an unbroken arc from one side of the cove to the other. The solitary figure limped to the edge of the surf and peered through the stinging scud. Then, raising his hands to his mouth, he began to call for his lost mate. “Nobby!” he shouted, and again and again, “Nobby! Nobby!... Nob-bee-e!” ... “Nobby,” echoed the cliffs behind, disinterestedly. “Hi! Hi! Hi!” mocked the gulls. The survivor waded knee-deep into the froth of an incoming sea.