I must not die!" Thus he lived through a few seconds that seemed to him like hours.

He felt the brute force of hidden friction, then a blow in the abdomen that arrested his course between the two waters, and grasping at the irregularities of a projecting rock, he raised his head and was able to breathe.

The wave was retreating, but another again overwhelmed him, detaching him from the point with its foamy churning, making him leave in the stony crevices bits of the skin of his hands, his breast, and his knees.
The oceanic suction seemed dragging him down in spite of his desperate strokes.

"It's no use! I'm going to die," half of his mind was saying and at the same time his other mental hemisphere was reviewing with lightning synthesis his entire life.

He saw the bearded face of the _Triton_ in this supreme instant.