When all the other surfers had taken a wave and he was alone on the swell, Sharkey steeled himself and, positioning his board on a rising wave, paddled like mad to stay with it and overtop it. And what he saw astonished him, for as the wave rose the base of it fell away, forty feet or more of its gleaming curve, and as he scrambled to his feet to ride it he slipped and fell forward, and the wave closed over him, an indifferent feature of the sea, vast and implacable, pressing him and overwhelming him and taking him down, burying him—not in fury, not a god or a giant but a dumb sudden stunning bigness that bulked above him and just as suddenly collapsed. Seconds of its colossal wash before another, heavier wave swept over him, past a shaft of sunlight, tumbling him into suffocating darkness, burying him again.

Bubbles rattled in his ears, his leash tugged at his ankle, he fought the surge—the thick sweep of water—and was dragged down until he reached and slipped the leash over his foot. His board banged across his body and then he was on his back, staring at the sun, the shore break licking at him.

He knew he was bruised from the thump of his board and being pushed against the rocks, but more than anything he was embarrassed—afraid that he’d been seen. He crawled up the beach on all fours, his knees bleeding, and his arm was sliced—probably by the fin of his board. Before he located his board and dropped to the sand, he looked around. No one had seen him, or if they had, they were as indifferent to him as the wave that had crushed him.

No—the girl in the red wetsuit sat with her knees together behind him on the beach. She must have seen it all, his wipeout, his struggle, his creeping up the beach. He waved to her, and with a simple flick of her hand she waved back, then averted her eyes—so bold on the waves, so shy on the beach. And perhaps feeling conspicuous, she picked up her board and walked away, treading the sand in a stately way like the strut of a shorebird.

Uncle Sunshine’s voice was in his head—a stern command to go again, to take another wave. This he did, not at Pipeline but down the beach at Off the Wall, where the waves were breaking left and were smaller. Purely to make a point, for his morale, so that he could tell Uncle Sunshine he hadn’t been defeated, he paddled out and rode a wave halfway in, and then another.