Answer: "He" is the person who succeeded despite the doubters.
The context seems to be a situation that seemed impossible to most people, but one person dared to try, even when someone scoffed and tried to discourage him.
The alliteration is the repetition of s-sounds in "someone scoffed"
Explanation:
The part of this excerpt from Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat" describe the narrator's opinion of the sea as a hostile entity is "that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective".
awaited, and it's not a linking verb
