Read "The Four Corners of the World" by A.E.W. Mason online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
At midnight on August 4th, Poldhu flung the news out to all ships, and Anthony Strange, on the _Boulotte_, took the message in the middle of the West Bay. He carried on accordingly past Weymouth, and in the morning was confronted with the wall of great breakers off St. Alban's Head.
The little boat ran towards that barrier with extraordinary swiftness. Strange put her at a gap close into the shore where the waves broke lower, and with a lurch and a shudder she scooped the water in over her bows and clothed herself to her brass gunwale-top in a stinging veil of salt. Never had the _Boulotte_ behaved better than she did that morning in the welter of the Race, and Strange, rejoicing to his very finger-tips, forgot the news which was bringing all the pleasure-boats, great and small, into the harbours of the south, forgot even that sinking of the heart which had troubled him throughout the night. But it was only in the Race that he knew any comfort. He dropped his anchor in Poole Harbour by mid-day, and fled through London to a house he owned on the Berkshire Downs.