Beckman had never heard so deafening a roar in all his life. He had, on one occasion, felt a great superdreadnaught roll and quiver under the simultaneous discharge of her own principal batteries under actual service conditions. It was child’s play to this. Not that he had any thought about it now. He was only conscious of the roaring in his ears, the awful pressure upon his body, as he was driven down, down, down, until it seemed as if the bowels of the earth had opened before him and swallowed him up; as if he would never be lifted again out of the great deep which had sucked him under.
He held his breath instinctively, of course, but it seemed as if his lungs and heart would burst. His whole being was merged in two frantic desires: to keep on holding his breath, and not to let go of the woman who clung to him. Mercifully, although his body had shielded hers, she had almost lost consciousness. There remained to her only the desperate instinct to cling. She twined her arms and legs about him. He drew her closer and closer, although the tremendous thrust of the sea seemed to be striving to tear them apart as well as draw them under. Thus linked into a human warp and woof, they were hurled down and down, out and out.
Just when he had come to the conclusion that further resistance was impossible, that he must breathe or die, or breathe and die, the two interwoven figures, caught in a mad whirl of the torrent, were thrown upward. Their movements were arrow-like in their swiftness; or, better, they were driven as a stone from a mighty catapult. Swimming was impossible. There was no effort that could be made. There was nothing that he or the woman could do but to cling tighter and tighter. To hold on, that was all!
Truda’s grass petticoats were torn to pieces in an instant. The water, in its awful churning, stripped Beekman to his bare skin. It would have torn his shoes off if he had been wearing them. Nothing that he had ever imagined equalled the force, the pressure, the stripping, ripping suction; the driving, beating, thrusting of the sea, unless it was a full-fledged western tornado. He had met such on the plains. Of course, these comparisons did not occur to him then. All he thought of when they were thrown out of the water and into the spray-laden air, which made seeing difficult, but not impossible, was to breathe, to breathe quickly and deep so as to be prepared for the next buffet of fortune.