Sitting in the boat was like sitting on a wild horse. As each wave came, the boat rose and fell. The boat was like a horse starting toward a fence too high to jump. The problem was that after floating over one wave you find another one behind it, just as strong, ready to flood your boat. As each wall of water came in, it hid everything else that the men could see. The waves came in silence. Only their white tops made threatening noises. In the weak light, the faces of the men must have looked gray. Their eyes must have shone in strange ways as they looked out at the sea. The sun rose slowly into the sky. The men knew it was the middle of the day because the color of the sea changed from slate gray to emerald green. And the white foam on the waves looked like falling snow. As the lifeboat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the hair of the men. As the boat dropped down again, the water fell just past them. The top of each wave was a hill, from which the men could see, for a brief moment, a wide area of shining sea. The cook said the men were lucky because the wind was blowing toward the shore. If it started blowing the other way, they would never reach land. The reporter and the sailor agreed.