Tom knew that the cutter would never get through the breakers. There was not the tenth part of the tenth part of a chance of it; therefore he flung off his coat and kicked off his shoes, so as to be in readiness when the time should come. There was not much of the raging and the lashing of the surf to be seen from the sea. Now and then a spit of foamy water would shoot high up into the air from the recoil of the waters on the hard sand, but they could not tell what the full wrath and roaring of the great breakers were until they had gotten fairly in amongst them. Jack did all that a man could do to get that boat to the beach. He tried rather to keep it off than to urge it too rapidly toward the shore. He did his work well, for he had brought the cutter through the first line of breakers, and into the second—but he got her no further. A monstrous wave, fully twelve feet high, a solid mountain of green water, came rushing toward them, its crest growing sharper and sharper, and seeming to mount higher and higher as it swept toward the shore. “Pull for your lives!” roared Jack, in a voice of thunder. But it was no use, for the next instant the breaker was on them. For a moment Tom had a feeling of spinning toward the shore, with the green water towering ten feet above him; then it arched slowly over, there was a crash and a roar, and he was struggling in a whirling, watery blindness. Over and over he rolled, grasping at the sand every now and then, but all the time feeling himself as helpless as a rat in the tumultuous swirling of the water. Presently he felt himself being sucked out again. Faster and faster he went, as the undertow gathered force in its rush. For a moment he gained his feet, and bore with all his strength against the outgoing water. The sand slid from beneath his heels, till he must have sunk three inches into it. For an instant he had a half-blinded vision of Jack Baldwin, fifteen or twenty feet nearer to the shore than himself. Then came another crashing roar, and he was whirled over and over and round and round, like a feather in the water. A great feeling of utter helplessness came over him; for a moment his lips came to the surface and he gave a gurgling cry. Out went the undertow again, and out went Tom with it, only to meet another breaker and to be again whirled by it toward the beach. By this time he had given up struggling, and everything was sliding away from him. All of a sudden he felt himself clutched by the shirt. Once more came the horrible dragging of the undertow, but this time some one was holding him against it. Everything was glimmering to his sight, but he felt that he was being dragged up on the beach, and at last that he was lying on the dry sand, face up, and Jack Baldwin panting alongside of him. PART II CHAPTER X.