Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/109

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BLUE PETER
95

been done—that fellow in '56. At all events, he shifted his stroke again, and swam on tediously.

Of a sudden he noticed that the apple was bearing rapidly down,—was alongside, on a little raised rim of water like a moving flaw in glass. Next instant he had spun about and was facing seaward. Something below twirled his legs violently.

"Hello!" he sputtered aloud. "Good Lord!" he thought. "This is bad. I must get out of this."

But the running ocean was stronger. The water hissed, curved on a slant, boiled upward, regurgitated in patches white as with melting snowflakes. A submarine force, gigantic and appalling, spun him round and round and whirled him downward. He wrestled frantically. His head sank inside a wide cylinder of smooth green glass, laced about spirally with running silver threads. His ears, long deafened by the noise of swimming, were filled with a strange roar. "Whirlpool! It's all up. I 'll see where it goes to, anyway," he thought insanely, and strained