“Then it’s all over with us, gen’lemen,” said Hardock. “Tom Dinass has got his revenge against us, and it’s time to begin saying our prayers.”
“Time to begin saying our prayers!” cried Gwyn, angrily. “I’ve been saying mine ever since we knew the worst. It’s time we began to work, and try our best to save our lives. Now, Joe, on again the other way, and take the first turning off to the left.”
Joe obeyed, and they struggled back amidst the whispering and gurgling sounds which came from out of the darkness, before and behind; while now, to fully prove what was wrong, they noticed the peculiar odour of the sea-water when impregnated with seaweed in a state of decay, and directly after Gwyn had called attention to the fact Joe uttered a cry.
“What is it?” said Gwyn anxiously. “Don’t drown the lights.”
“Something—an eel, I think—clinging round my leg.”
“Eel wouldn’t cling round your leg; he’d hold on by his teeth. See what it is.”
“Long strands of bladder-wrack,” said Joe, after cautiously raising one leg from the water.
“No mistake about the sea bursting in,” said Gwyn. “Why, of course, it has done so before. Don’t you remember finding sand and sea-shells in some of the passages?”
No one spoke; and finding that the efforts he had, at no little cost to himself, made to divert his companions’ attention from their terrible danger were vain, he too remained nearly always silent, listening shudderingly to the wash, wash of the water as they tramped through it, and he thought of the time coming when it would rise higher and higher still.
Gwyn could think no more in that way, for the horror that attacked him at the thought that it meant they must all soon die. Once the idea came to him that he was watching his companions struggling vainly in the black water; but, making a desperate effort, he forced himself to think only of the task they had in hand, and just then he shouted to Joe to turn off to the left, for another opening appeared, and the lad was going past it with his head bent down.