It strikes 'The Rips,' and is there itself struck by a wave approaching from another direction.

The two converge in their advance, and are dashed together--embrace each other like two angry giants, each striving to mount upon the shoulder of the other and crush its antagonist with its ponderous bulk.

Swift as thought they mount higher and higher, in fierce, mad struggle, until their force is expended; their tops quiver, tremble, and burst into one great mass of white, gleaming foam; and the whole body of the united wave, with a mighty bound, hurls itself upon the shore and is broken into a flood of seething waters--crushed to death in its own fury.
"All over the shoal the waves leap up in pinnacles, in volcanic points, sharp as stalagmites, and in this form run hither and yon in all possible directions, colliding with and crashing against others of equal fury and greatness--a very carnival of wild and drunken waves; the waters hurled upward in huge masses of white.

Sometimes they unite more gently, and together sweep grandly and gracefully along parallel with the shore; and the cavernous hollows stretch out from the shore so that you look into the trough of the sea and realize what a terrible depth it is.

The roar, meanwhile, is horrible.