Of High Descent

by George Manville Fenn

“Hah!”

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.