Then he shouted,-- "Sharp, now, boys, or we'll be rolling in the surf in three minutes! Haul away, Dick! Haul with him, Ford! Up with her! There, that'll give us headway." Ford Foster looked out to seaward, even while he was hauling his best upon the sail halyards.

All along the line of the coast, at distances varying from a hundred yards or so to nearly a mile, there was an irregular line of foaming breakers--an awful thing for a boat like "The Swallow" to run into! Perhaps; but ten times worse for a larger craft, for the latter would be shattered on the shoals, where the bit of a yacht would find plenty of water under her; that is, if she did not, at the same time, find too much water _over_ her.
"Can't we go back through the inlet in the bar ?" asked Ford.
"Not with this wind in our teeth, and it's getting worse every minute.
No more will it do to try to keep inside the surf." "What can we do, then ?" "Take the smoothest places we can find, and run 'em.

The sea isn't very rough outside.

It's our only chance." Poor Ford Foster's heart sank within him, as he listened, and as he gazed ahead upon the long white line of foaming surf and tossing breakers.

He saw, however, a look of heroic resolution rising in "Captain Kinzer's" face, and it gave him courage to turn his eyes again towards the surf.
"The Swallow" was now once more moving in a way to justify her name; and, although Ford was no sailor, he could see that her only chance to penetrate that perilous barrier of broken water was to "take it nose on," as Dick Lee expressed it.
That was clearly the thing Dab Kinzer intended to do.