“Now I was floating in; then, as the waves receded, I was drawn back, shivering and shuddering, as I felt the long brown slimy strands of the seaweed twining about my body like some horrible sea monster. Now I tried to hold by the rocky wall; but it was slippery, and glided by my fingers. But the cold shock of the water had done something to renew my energy, and instead of growing more helpless, I found that I could swim with more vigour after a few seconds; and once, as I floated over it, I managed to get a resting-place upon a smooth piece of rock about a foot under water. But the next minute it was three feet from the surface, as a wave came rolling in with the rising tide; and I was lifted off and borne many yards farther into the darkness of the cave.
“The moonlight penetrated for some distance; but beyond that all looked black and horrible, except where now and then I could see a wave break over a rock, and then there was a flash of light, and the water sparkled with the pale phosphorescent light—foul water, as the fishermen here call it. It was a horrible-looking place for an unnerved man to swim into; but in my weak state I dare not try to face the rough water at the mouth; so, as every wave came and bore me farther in, I swam on into the darkness, with the fear upon me that some dreadful monster would lace its arms round me and drag me under. More than once I shrieked out, for the seaweeds were thick here, and my feet were entangled; but I swam on, till after many trials I found a piece of rock upon which I could climb, and sit with the water washing round me and nearly hearing me off.
“And now I drooped, helpless and miserable; my remaining strength seemed to go away, and I hung down my head, and cried like a child. But that fit went off, and rousing up a little I looked about me; but only to see the moonlit, beautifully solemn mouth of the cave, with the silvery water rushing in. It looked beautiful and solemn to me, even then; while the hollow, deep, echoing, musical roar of the waves at the mouth, and in the lulls, the strange tinkling, mournful splash of the water dripping from the roof, farther in, where it was all dark, sounded dreadful to me.
“But the tide was rising, and I soon found that I must leave the rock I was on, and swim or wade farther in; while now the horrible thought came—would the tide fill the cavern, and should I be drowned at last? The thought was so horrible, that I was very nearly jumping off and trying to swim to the mouth, where, in my weak state, I must have lost my life; for a strong man could not battle with the waves as the tide rises. I had often heard tell of this ‘Hugo,’ as they call it here, but no one had ever explored it that I know of; for it is only in the calmest of weather that a boat could come near. However, I sat still for a few more moments, trying to pierce the darkness, and find a resting-place higher up. I dared not lower myself into the water again, for thought after thought kept coming of the strange sea creatures that might make the cave their home; but my indecision was put an end to by a heavy wave that came rolling in, and I was lifted from my seat and borne in again for some distance, and dashed against a stone, to whose slimy sides I clung as the water rushed back. Then I tried to find the bottom with my feet, but all in vain; and striking out, I swam on farther and farther into the darkness, helped on by a wave now and then, and clinging to some projection to keep from being sucked back—for once down again in the water, the dread seemed to some extent to leave me.
“On reaching a rock that I could climb upon, to my great joy I found that I could get beyond the reach of the water; but I had to feel my way, for by a bend of the cave I could now see no moonlit mouth, only a shining reflection upon one of the wet walls of the place; while all around me was a horrible black darkness, made ten times more dreadful by the strange echoing wash and drip of the water in the far recesses.
“Perhaps a bolder man would have felt his nerves creep, as it were, sitting, dripping and trembling, upon a slimy piece of stone in that dreadful darkness, conjuring up horrors of a kind that at more calm moments he could not describe; but knowing all the while, by merely stretching out a foot now and then, that the tide was rising higher and higher to sweep him off. Now my feet were under water, then my knees, and soon it rose so high that at every ninth wave—‘the death wave,’ as we call it down here on the coast—I could feel myself lifted a little; and at last, just as it was before, I was swept off, and swimming again in the darkness to find another rock on which I could creep. More than once I touched something, with hand or foot, and snatched it shudderingly back; while at such times the waves bore me backwards and forwards as they ebbed and flowed. As far as I could tell, the bottom was quite beyond my reach, for I let down my feet again and again. But the cave grew much narrower; for now I struck my head against one side, and then against the other, as I laboriously swam along farther and farther, as it were, into the depths of the earth, till once more I came against a part of the rock which I could climb up—this time, by feeling carefully about, till I struck my head against the roof; and then crouched once more shiveringly down, waiting in a half-dazed, swoon-like state for the next time when I should have to make a struggle for life. I felt dull and listless, my senses seemed to be numbed, and it was almost in a dream that I half sat, half lay upon the wet rock, listening to the wash of the waves, and the dull roar echoing from the cave mouth; while close by me there seemed to be strange whispering sounds mingling with the dripping from the roof, which fell always with a little melodious plash.
“Sometimes I seemed to doze—a sort of stuporlike sleep from exhaustion—and then I started with a cry, expecting that I was hanging once more to the rock outside, or being swept away by a wave from the rock upon which I was resting; and at last, far in as I was, there came what to me was like hope of life—for at first very faint and pale, but by degrees stronger, the light of day came down into the thick blackness of that awful hole, cutting it like arrows, and striking upon the waters before it became broken and spread around.
“As far as I could see, it came down from the roof eight or ten yards from where I sat, but it was a long time before I could summon courage to lower myself into the water, and swim along till I came beneath the bright rays, when I found that they beamed through a rift in the roof some ten feet above me; though, as I again drew myself out of the water on to the rugged side, and then clambered into the rough, long rift, I was so stiff and weak that every movement made me groan with pain.
“Now, come here again to where the rift is, and you can look down, and listen to the roar and bubbling of the water. A strange, wild place, but I made my way up to light and life once more; though I have never found any man here yet with courage to go down, while how much farther the hole penetrates into the bowels of the earth no one knows. There are plenty of such caves along the coast here, made by the water gradually eating out a soft vein of stone from one that is harder; while as to my leaving my bed like that, and climbing to where I had been the day before, it must have been from over-excitement, I suppose. But there, such cases are common, and as a boy I often walked in my sleep, and went by night to places where I could not have gone had I been awake.”