Aware that he had no mercy to expect between the hands of Allan on one side, and those of the police on the other, Hawke Holcroft thought only of escape, and, dreading flight towards the town, in the blindness of his terror or confusion he turned towards the sea, and ran along the summit of the steep, rocky, and abruptly shelving bank that is overlooked by the low earthen-works and square, squat tower of Southsea Castle.
Finding Allan close upon him, so close that he could almost hear his footsteps, amid the bellowing of the wind and booming of the sea that rolled in white foam against the stone parapet wall which was bordered by the narrow pathway he was compelled to pursue, he suddenly turned in blind desperation and levelled a revolver at Allan's head, while a tiger-like fury filled his sallow visage.
It snapped, hung fire, and was struck from his hand by Allan, on which he turned again and fled into the grey obscurity, whither Allan could not follow him now, as the sea with a succession of angry roars was lashing the steep stony bank and hurling its spray over the parapet wall, while wave after wave boiled over all the path the fugitive had to pursue.
Again and again he saw the miserable wretch lose his footing, while the waves tried to suck him down, and again and again, clinging with despairing energy to the edge of the stony path, he strove to recover it.
A low wailing cry of despair escaped him as one wave towering higher than all the rest—perhaps a tenth wave, if there be such a thing—enveloped him in its foamy flood and sucked him furiously downward in its back-wash, amid which he seemed to struggle feebly as a fly might have done.
Once or twice Allan saw his head bobbing amid the white foam and his upthrown hands, that had nothing to clutch at, till the waves dashed him again and again, as if in wild sport, among a row of great wooden dolphins which are placed in the shingle there to break the fury of the incoming sea, and stand up like a line of gigantic teeth, and in less than a minute Hawke Holcroft vanished from sight!
Then a long breath escaped Allan.
'The sea has done it not I, though richly did he merit at my hands the fate he has met,' thought he, as he hurried away to alarm the sentinels and castle guard; but all too late to succour Holcroft in any way or even to search for his body.
Darkness had set in now, the fury of the sea was increasing, and if Hawke Holcroft was found at all, it would be as a drowned man, with the fatal diamonds in his possession, when the tide ebbed and the long stretch of seaweed and shingle was left dry.
But he might never be found at all, and lie, as the skeletons are still lying there, among the timbers of the Royal George.