The breakers were sounding much more loudly by the time he was able to take his attention from these jobs, and he realized that his assumption of a shoreward drift was justified. The waves were imparting a sickening up-and-down motion to his unusual raft, which neither bothered nor pleased him; it was horizontal motion he wanted, and that was comparatively slow until the water became quite shallow.

He waited for a long time after his conveyance stopped moving, expecting each moment to be floated and dragged back into deep water again, but nothing happened, and gradually the sound of waves began to decrease slightly and the amount of spray falling on him to diminish. The Hunter suspected that the storm was dying.out. Actually, the tide had turned; but the result was the same as far as he was concerned.

By the time the combination of approaching dawn and thinning storm clouds provided enough light for his surroundings to be visible his late host was well above the reach of the heaviest waves. The shark's eyes would not focus on their own retinas out of water, but the Hunter found that the new focal surface was inside the eyeball and built a retina of his own in the appropriate place. The lenses also turned out to be a little less than perfect, but he modified their curvature with some of his own body substance and eventually found himself able to see his surroundings without exposing himself to the view of others.

There were rifts in the storm clouds now through which a few of the brightest stars were still visible against the gray background of approaching dawn. Slowly these breaks grew larger, and by the time the sun rose the sky was almost clear, though the wind still blew fiercely.

His vantage point was not ideal, but he was able to make out a good deal of his surroundings. In one direction the beach extended a short distance to a line of tall, slender trees crowned with feathery tufts of leaves. He could not see beyond these, his point of observation being too low, though they were not themselves set thickly enough to obstruct the view.