I waved my arms as a signal to them to stop, but they paid no attention to me; and I saw them run the boat into the water, jump into her, and pull off, all singing a song to their stroke in their own language, the sound of which came faintly up to the top of the Point.  “Stupid fellows!” I muttered to myself, “they might have known that the boat was not wanted;” and I was again about to turn away, when I was suddenly seized from behind, and carried to the very edge of the cliff, and then as suddenly released.

I sprang to one side, and turning round saw Jackson, with a look of such savage fury on his face that I retreated a step or two in astonishment at him.  He perceived my alarm, and burst out into a fit of laughter, which, instead of reassuring me, had the opposite effect, it was so demoniacal in character.  “Ha! ha!” he laughed again, “are you frightened?” and advancing toward me, he put his face close to mine, peering into it with bloodshot eyes, while his breath, reeking of spirits, poured into my nostrils.

Involuntarily I put up my arm to keep him off.  He clutched it, and, pointing with his other hand to the sea, whispered hoarsely, “What do you hear of the surf?  Will the breakers be heavier before sundown?  See how they begin to curve!  Listen how they already thunder, thunder, on the beach!  I tell you they are impatient—­they seek some one,” he shouted.  “Do you know,” he continued, lowering his voice again, and speaking almost confidentially, “sooner or later some one is drowned upon that bar?” And even as he spoke a fresh line of breakers arose from the deep, farther out than any had been before.  This much I observed, but I was too greatly unnerved by the strange manner of Jackson to pay further heed to the sea.  It had flashed across my mind that he was on the verge of an attack of delirium tremens, from the effects of the liquor he had been consuming for so long, and the problem was to get him back to the house quietly.

Suddenly a thought struck me.  Putting my arm within his, I said, as coolly as I could, “Never mind the sea, Jackson; let us have a matabicho” (our local expression for a “drink").  He took the bait, and came away quietly enough to the house.  Once there, I enticed him into the dining-room, and shutting to the door quickly, I locked it on the outside, resolving to keep him there until Mr. Bransome should return; for, being alone, I was afraid of him.

Then I went back to the end of the Point to look for the return of the two boats.  When I reached it I saw that the rollers had increased in size in the short time that I had been absent, and that they were breaking, one after another, as fast as they could come shoreward; not pygmy waves, but great walls of water along their huge length before they fell.

A surf such as I had never yet seen had arisen.  I stood and anxiously watched through a glass the boats at the steamer’s side, and at length, to my relief, I saw one of them leave her, but as it came near I saw, to my surprise, that Mr. Bransome was not in the boat, and that it was not the one that Sooka steered.  Quickly it was overtaken by the breakers, but escaped their power, and came inshore on the back of a majestic roller that did not break until it was close to the beach, where the boat was in safety.