What you may not have known is that there is a current along this coast, from the west (the Atlantic) eastward into the English Channel.

Another rash braggart like you, Sergeant Troy in Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, went swimming on a fine day from another beautiful spot on the Dorset coast, Lulworth Cove, leaving his clothes on the beach. He was swept away and presumed dead; and that's what happens to you. You may be thankful not to be swept toward the open ocean, though in that direction the Cobb might have stopped you. Troy was picked up by a ship and found himself living a second life in another country. You will probably be lucky much sooner than he was, because Lyme's lifeboat team keeps in good practice and has made many a rescue.

But let us imagine that you're a good enough swimmer to stay afloat. (Try that hands-behind-head resting posture.) Night comes on—you drift east—you drift past the dark shapes of long cliffs, with the lights of a few hamlets between them—at last you win your way shoreward—your feet touch gravel and you wonder where you are. Probably not in France, because although the English Channel may look narrow on a map of the world, it's a hundred miles wide. Roughly assisted by burly waves, you crawl faintly up on—