In vain I strove to learn how Mr.Pike forecasts these antics, and I am driven to believe that he does not consciously forecast them at all.

He _feels_ them; he knows them.

They, and the sea, are ingrained in him.
Toward the end of our little promenade I was guilty of impatiently shaking off a sudden seizure of my arm in his big paw.

If ever, in an hour, the _Elsinore_ had been less gymnastic than at that moment, I had not noticed it.

So I shook off the sustaining clutch, and the next moment the _Elsinore_ had smashed down and buried a couple of hundred feet of her starboard rail beneath the sea, while I had shot down the deck and smashed myself breathless against the wall of the chart-house.
My ribs and one shoulder are sore from it yet.