The little Jew clung to the end of the oar like a cat, writhing and grunting, his mouth open, and his eyes fixed and staring.

When his hands were gone, he tried to embrace the oar with his arms.

He slid off in the hollow of a wave, his body turned over twice, and then he sank, his head thrown back, his eyes still open and staring, and a silver chain of bubbles escaping from his mouth.
"Give way, men!" said the engineer.
"Oh, God!" exclaimed Vandover, turning away and vomiting over the side.
A little while later some one on the bow of the boat called to the engineer asking why it was they were not heading for the shore.

The engineer did not answer, but Vandover in some way understood that it was too dangerous to attempt to run the breakers in such heavy weather, and that they must keep in the open, holding the boat head on to the seas until either the wind fell or they were picked up by some other vessel.
It was still very dark, and seen under the night from the little boat, the ocean and the sky seemed immense and terrible; the great waves grew out of the obscurity ahead of them, rushing down upon the boat, big, swelling, silent, their crests occasionally hissing and breaking into irruptions of cold white froth.

As one of them would draw near, the boat would rise upon it as though it would never stop, would hang a moment upon its summit and then topple into the black gulf that followed, sending the bitter icy spray high into the air.