his first distance mark, a white can-buoy two thirds of the way across the channel; beyond that, a broad eddy of the tide, a slightly raised surface, smooth and yellowish-white, like a sheet of ice, where hundreds of white gulls wheeled or floated in search of break- fast; and beyond these again, the wharves and meagre shipping of the town,—the square-rigged shapely tangle of his own ship, the Elizabeth Fanning.
The numbness began to leave him, though an ice-cold ring circled his neck where wind and water met. Like all swimmers, he grew confused in his sense of time, and had strange thoughts. Halfway to the can-buoy now; no longer slack water; must hurry. A half-eaten apple came bobbing peacefully toward him on the young flood. He wondered who had eaten it, and whether it were sweet or sour. But where the devil had all his Latin gone to? Her father had said "enaviganda." Did that mean it could be swum through, or it could n't? He suffered a morbid worry over the meaning of this word, as if it contained the secret of his present fate. The thing had
