'The settlement!' I cried. 'The coming in of the tide has made the landslip settle!'
When I sat with closed eyes examining my fiery photograph, I had calculated the 'settlement' at the return of the tide as being among the chances of escape. But feeling myself to be engaged in a duel with Circumstance (more cruel than the fiends), I believed that the settlement would come too late for us, or even if it did not come too late, it might not hide away the spectacle. The settlement had come; what had it done for us? This I must know at once.
'Untie the rope,' I said; 'quick, untie the rope, there is a settlement of the landslip.'
'But what has the settlement to do with us?' said Winnie.
'It has to do with us, dear; untie the rope. It has much to do with us, Winnie,' I said; for now the determination to save her life came on me stronger than ever.
When the rope was untied, I said, 'Wait till I call,' and I ran round the corner of the débris. The great upright wall of earth and sward, from which had stared the body of Wynne, had fallen, hiding him and his crime together!
To return round the corner of the landslip and call Winifred was the work of an instant, and, quick as she was in answering my call, by the time she had reached me I had thrown off my coat and boots.
'Now for a run and a tussle with the waves, Winnie,' I said.
'Then we are not going to die?'
'We are going to live. Run; in six more returns of a wave like that there will he four feet of water at the Point.'