Before returning home to Alabama, Keller and Miss Sullivan are invited to stay with a friend, Mrs. Hopkins, on Cape Cod. This vacation offers Keller her first chance to swim in the ocean, a prospect that thrills her at first. Keller refers to the ocean as her “most vivid recollection of that summer” (62). She had read about the sea in one of her books and is eager to swim in it.

Keller’s plunge into the ocean is what she hoped for at first; she says, “The buoyant motion of the water filled me with an exquisite, quivering joy” (62). That joy gives way to terror when she is overcome by the waves, and slips on the floor of the ocean, losing her balance and going under the water. The tide throws Keller back towards shore where Miss Sullivan helps her out of the ocean.

Despite her momentary upset, Keller finds an affinity for the sea, declaring, “I could never stay long enough on the shore” (64). On another trip to the ocean, Miss Sullivan catches a horseshoe crab and brings it to Keller, who decides to keep it as a pet. She brings the crab back to the Hopkins home and demands that Miss Sullivan place the crab in a trough by a well.