It was blowing so hard, too, that a man could hardly stand upright, but was obliged to creep along the clean-swept snow-field, so that there could be no thought of helping.
I had crept up the hill at the back of the house, and stood in the shelter of a rocky knoll, from which I could see both out over the sea and down into the bay.
West Fjord on this wintry day lay as if covered with a silvery grey smoke from the spray that was driving across the sea.

Beneath the cliffs the waves came in like great, green, foam-topped mountains, breaking on the shore with a noise like thunder, and then retreating an immense distance, leaving a long stretch of dry beach.
At one place, where a rock went perpendicularly down to the sea, a great, broad jet of spray was sent straight up every time a wave broke, and was driven in over the land by the wind like smoke.

At another place the waves stormed in a Titanic way a sloping rock, which lay, now in foam, now high and dry, and I saw a poor exhausted gull, which had probably got out from its mountain cliff into the wind, fighting and battling in it, often with its wings almost twisted.
In anxious suspense I watched the yacht down in the bay.

To my astonishment, I saw a man on board, and recognised the stalwart Jens, who had ventured out with one of the men, from the windward side, in a six-oared boat.

After a short stay on board he stepped down alone into the boat with a rope round his waist, and began the dangerous work of hauling the boat against the waves, along the tight land-rope, out towards the rock.
I expected every instant that the boat would fill, and it seemed to me that the waves washed in several times.