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 afterward 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 light 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.
Volume Three—Chapter Two.
A Place of Refuge.
If ever miserable wretch prayed for the light of returning day that wretch was Harry Vine. It seemed hours of agony, during which the water hissed and surged all round him as if in search of the victim who had escaped, before the faint light in the east began to give promise of the morn.
Two or three times over he had noted a lantern far out toward the distant harbour, but to all appearances the search had ceased for the night, and he was too cold and mentally stunned to heed that now.
He had some idea of where he must be—some three miles from the little harbour, but he could not be sure, and the curve outward of the land hid the distant light.
Once or twice he must have slept and dreamed in a fevered way, for he started into wakefulness with a cry of horror, to sit chilled and helpless for the rest of the night, trying to think out his future, but in a confused, dreamy way that left him where he had started at the first.