But it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the tide, here running like a mill race, makes a long belt of broken water--a _Roost_ we call it--at the tail of the land.

I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the _Roost_ were talking to itself.

But when the tide begins to run again, and above all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a place.
You can hear the roaring of it six miles away.

At the seaward end there comes the strongest of the bubble; and it's here that these big breakers dance together--the dance of death, it may be called--that have got the name, in these parts, of the Merry Men.

I have heard it said that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs twice as high as that.