English Dictionary

Sometimes owing to a peculiar formation of the coast, the waves are brought together in an angle, indenting the shore in such a way that this return flow, or undertow, runs out to sea in a continuous stream, which is called a sea-puss. The sea-puss is of variable width—from twenty or thirty feet to perhaps fifty or a hundred—and its location can generally be recognized by the peculiar roughness of the sea, […] as well as by the fact that the beach opposite to it is channeled by the action of the water. […] Thus is happens that there may exist a strong sea-puss at a certain point one day; and next day, or later in the same day, owing to a change in the tide, the veering of the wind, or the shifting of some sandbar, it may have entirely disappeared.