CHAPTER XV.
IN DESPERATE STRAITS.
Dazed by the sudden alarm, I lay for a moment hardly knowing where I was; then another lash of icy cold water across my face brought me to my senses, and I sprang to my feet.
Never shall I forget those terrible moments as we stood in pitchy darkness, relieved only by the faint, uncanny, phosphorescent light of the sea-water. The thudding boom of a big wave striking against the cliff and bursting in through the narrow archway, then the peculiar hollow sound the water made as it rushed along the cavern, and the fierce splash with which it expended its force against our platform—all are sounds which seem to echo in my ears even now as I write.
"The wind's come at last!" shouted George, and added something further which I could not catch.
"We're safe here," I answered at the top of my voice.
"I've no idea what the time is," he replied; "but I don't believe it's high water yet—the tide's still rising."
For just a few moments I think even brave George Woodley was panic-stricken at our hazardous situation, and his words added a fresh terror to the darkness. If the tide was still flowing, then it was only a matter of waiting till we should be washed away and drowned. There was apparently nothing to be done but to take up our position as far back as the width of our platform would allow, and so remain till our fate was decided.
The air was full of a fine drenching mist, but as yet only the broken spray from the waves had reached us. Trembling with cold and terror I stood, hoping against hope that the tide had reached its height or begun to ebb; then suddenly a larger sea than had hitherto entered the cavern swept clean over our place of refuge, the rushing surf whirling and hissing round our feet like a thousand serpents. The water had not taken us much above the ankles, but in that awful darkness I imagined for a moment that the end had already come, and clung to George with a cry of alarm.