Sea after sea breaks before, behind,
and under and over you, and rushes in to shore, leaving you behind.
When a wave crests, it gets steeper.
Imagine yourself, on your
hoard, on the face of that steep slope. If it stood still, you
would slide down just as a boy slides down a hill on his coaster.
"But," you object, "the wave doesn't stand still." Very true, but
the water composing the wave stands still, and there you have the
secret. If ever you start sliding down the face of that wave,
you'll keep on sliding and you'll never reach the bottom. Please
don't laugh. The face of that wave may be only six feet, yet you
can slide down it a quarter of a mile, or half a mile, and not reach
the bottom. For, see, since a wave is only a communicated agitation
or impetus, and since the water that composes a wave is changing
every instant, new water is rising into the wave as fast as the wave
travels. You slide down this new water, and yet remain in your old
position on the wave, sliding down the still newer water that is
rising and forming the wave. You slide precisely as fast as the
wave travels. If it travels fifteen miles an hour, you slide
fifteen miles an hour. Between you and shore stretches a quarter of
mile of water. As the wave travels, this water obligingly heaps
itself into the wave, gravity does the rest, and down you go,
sliding the whole length of it. If you still cherish the notion,
while sliding, that the water is moving with you, thrust your arms
into it and attempt to paddle; you will find that you have to be
remarkably quick to get a stroke, for that water is dropping astern
just as fast as you are rushing ahead.
And now for another phase of the physics of surf-riding. All rules
have their exceptions. It is true that the water in a wave does not
travel forward. But there is what may be called the send of the
sea. The water in the overtoppling crest does move forward, as you
will speedily realize if you are slapped in the face by it, or if
you are caught under it and are pounded by one mighty blow down
under the surface panting and gasping for half a minute. The water
in the top of a wave rests upon the water in the bottom of the wave.
But when the bottom of the wave strikes the land, it stops, while
the top goes on. It no longer has the bottom of the wave to hold it
up. Where was solid water beneath it, is now air, and for the first
time it feels the grip of gravity, and down it falls, at the same
time being torn asunder from the lagging bottom of the wave and
flung forward. And it is because of this that riding a surf-board
is something more than a mere placid sliding down a hill.
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