Page:The Wireless Operator with the U.S. Coast Guard.djvu/81

 bound Henry gazed at the scene. Always he had tried to picture to himself what the ocean looked like. Now he knew that to picture the ocean mentally one must first actually see it. This great, boundless, inconceivable body of water was too vast for the imagination alone to picture. Turn in which direction he would, Henry could see nothing but water. And this water was rolling and tossing and surging and splashing and leaping in a manner past description. Never before had Henry seen waves higher than those in the Hudson River and the New York Bay. He had read of the huge waves of the ocean, but what he now saw, though they were far from being of the largest size, awed and impressed him. He felt sure some of them must be ten feet high. The ensign, who had now come on watch, assured him that they were all of that.

No matter where he looked, Henry saw nothing but water, leagues and leagues of tossing billows, the bluish-green depths spotted everywhere with the yeasty white of foaming wave-crests. No ship was in sight. Land was many miles behind them. Not even a bit of driftwood broke the vast expanse of the heaving ocean. The only object that rose above those miles and miles of furious billows was the Iroquois herself. How tiny, how puny, how insignificant, she seemed in that vast wilderness of water. For a