Rolling in, huge and awful in the dim gloaming, the mighty billows roared nearer and nearer, hurling great masses of milky foam at their very feet. They could hardly see each other’s face in the weird, sepulchral light.
“Roland, we are close to Smugglers’ Ladder, are we not?”
He started at the sound of her voice, in which there was a ring of hope.
“Quite close. Why?”
“Is there no chance of escape that way?”
He shook his head sadly.
“None whatever. I had thought of that, but it seemed better to—to face the worst here in the open than to be drowned like rats in a hole. Why, the tide runs up it like a mill-race.”
He had thought of it, and now her suggestion revived the ghastliness of the idea. What a terrible revenge of Fate! Come what might there could be no hope. Had the awful Shape been seen upon The Skegs again? Would not men be discussing the apparition with bated breath the next morning as the chill dawn revealed to the eyes of the devoted searchers two drowned corpses? Could this legion of leaping, hungry billows be the same blue, smiling, peaceful sea, on whose shore they two had sat together, when from Olive’s lips he first heard about the drear tale of violence and revenge which overshadowed the spot as with a curse. If he were to meet his end in that place of all others? Then another idea struck him. They might by singular good luck find some ledge that would place them above the reach of the waters. He himself had no such hope, but it was just barely possible.
“It is our only chance,” he continued, “and the very poorest of poor ones. But come; we will try it.”
On they sped, straining every nerve to reach the great jagged rent in the cliff, which they could see not far ahead. Farther than they thought, though, for as they stood within its dismal portals, the advance-guard of the tide already swirled knee-deep around them.