He uttered a faint cry, for just then his hand touched something cold
and slimy, and for the moment he felt paralysed, as he recalled how
often a shark had come in with the tide. For the object he had touched
seemed to glide by him, and what felt like a slimy moving fin swept over
his hand. He struck out now with all his strength, blindly, and moved
solely by one impulse--that of escaping from a death so hideous--a chill
of horror ran through him, and for the moment he felt half paralysed.
The sensation was agonising, and the strokes he gave were quick,
spasmodic, and of the kind given by a drowning man; but as he swam on
and the moments passed without his being seized, the waning courage
began to return strongly once more, he recovered his nerve, and ceasing
his frantic efforts swam slowly on.
The efforts he had made had exhausted him, however, and he turned over
on his back to rest, and lie paddling gently, gazing straight up at the
glorious stars which burned so brilliantly overhead. The change was
restful, and conscious that the current swept him still swiftly along,
he turned once more and began to swim.
That fit of excitement, probably from touching some old weed-grown piece
of timber, must have lasted longer than he thought, for he had toiled on
heedless of which direction he took, and this direction had been
shoreward, the current had done the rest; and now that he swam it was
into one of the back tidal eddies, and the regular dull roar and rush
and the darkness ahead taught him that he was only a few hundred yards
from the cliffs. He rose up as he swam and looked sharply from side to
side, to see a faint lambent light where the phosphorescent waves broke,
and before him the black jagged line which seemed to terminate the
golden-spangled heavens, where the stars dipped down behind the shore.
He hesitated for a few moments--not for long. It was madness to strike
out again into the swift current, when in a short time he could land or,
if not, reach one of the detached masses of rock, and rest there till
the tide went down. But what to do then? Those who searched for him
would be certain to hunt along the shore, and to land and strike inland
was, in his drenched condition, to invite capture.
He shuddered at the thought, and awaking now to the fact that he was
rapidly growing exhausted, he swam on into the black band that seemed to
stretch beneath the cliffs.
He was weaker than he realised, and, familiar as he was with this part
of the coast, it now in the darkness assumed a weird, horrifying aspect;
the sounds grew, in his strangely excited state, appalling, and there
were moments when he felt as if the end had come. For as he swam on it
was every now and then into some moving mass of anchored wrack, whose
slimy fronds wrapped round and clung to his limbs, hampering his
movements and calling forth a desperate struggle before he could get
clear.
Then, as he reached the broken water, in spite of the lambent glare he
struck himself severely again and again upon some piece of jagged rock,
once so heavily that he uttered a moan of pain, and floated helplessly
and half unnerved, listening to the hissing rush and hollow gasping of
the waves as they plunged in and out among the cavities and hollows of
the rocks. A hundred yards out the sea was perfectly smooth, but here
in shore, as the tidal swell encountered the cliffs, the tide raced in
and out through the chaos of fallen blocks like some shoal of mad
creatures checked in their career and frightened in their frantic
efforts to escape.
Then every now and then came a low hollow moan like a faint and distant
explosion, followed by the rattling of stones, and a strange whispering,
more than enough to appal the stoutest swimmer cast there in the
darkness of the night.
Three times over was the fugitive thrown across a mass of slimy rock, to
which, losing heart now, he frantically clung, but only to be swept off
again, confused, blinded by the spray and with the water thundering in
his ears. Once his feet touched bottom, and he essayed to stand for a
moment to try and wade across, but he only stepped directly into a deep
chasm, plunging over his head, to rise beating the waves wildly, half
strangled, and in the strange numbed feeling of confusion which came
over him, his efforts grew more feeble, his strokes more aimless, and as
once more he went under and rose with the clinging weeds about his neck,
the fight seemed to be over, and he threw back his head gasping for
breath.
Rush! A wave curled right over, swept him from among the clammy weed,
and the next moment his head was driven against a mass of rock.
What followed seemed to take place in a feverish dream. He had some
recollection afterwards of trying to clamber up the rough limpet-bossed
rock, and of sinking down with the water plunging about his eyes and
leaping at intervals right up his chest, but some time elapsed before he
thoroughly realised his position, and dazed and half helpless climbed
higher up to lie where the rock was dry, listening with a shudder to the
strange sounds of the hurrying tide, and gazing up from time to time at
the watching stars.