Chapter Thirty Eight.

The Stupor Broken.

The white stone, unfractured, ranks as most precious;
The blue lily, unblemished, emits the finest fragrance;
The heart, when it is harassed, finds no place of rest;
The mind, in the midst of bitterness, thinks only of grief.
 
The Sorrows of Hän, a Chinese Tragedy.

After these days Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred’s, as he supposed, for the last time. His guardian, a stiff, unsympathising man, had informed him, that as his mother’s annuity ceased with her life, there was very little left to support him. The sale, however, of the house at Fuzby, and the scholarship which he had just won, would serve to maintain him for a few years, and meanwhile his guardian would endeavour to secure for him a place in some merchant’s office, where gradually he would be able to earn a livelihood.

It was a very different life from that which this fine, clever high-spirited boy had imagined for himself, and he looked forward to the prospect with settled despair. But he seemed now to regard himself as a victim of destiny, regretting nothing, and opposing nothing, and caring for nothing. He told Walter with bitter exaggeration “that he must indeed thank him for giving up the scholarship, as he supposed that it had saved him from starvation. His guardian, who had a family of his own, didn’t seem to care a straw for him; and he had no friend in the world besides.”

And as, for days and weeks, he brooded over these gloomy thoughts and sad memories, he fell into a weary, broken, aimless kind of life. Many tried to comfort him, but they could not reach his sorrow; in their several ways his school friends did all they could to cheer him up, but they all failed. He grew moody, solitary, silent. Walter often sought him out, and talked in his lively, cheerful, happy strain; but even his society Kenrick seemed to shun. He was in that morbid, unhealthy state when to meet others inspires a positive shrinking of mind. He seemed to have no pleasure except in shutting himself up in his study, and in taking long lonely walks. He performed his house duties mechanically, and by routine; when he read the lessons in chapel, his voice sounded as though it came from afar, like the voice of one who dreamed; he sat with his books before him for long hours, and made no progress, hardly knowing the page on which he was employed. In school, he sat listlessly playing with his pen, taking no notes, seeming as though he heard nothing, and was scarcely aware of what was going on. His friends could not guess what would come of it, but they grew afraid for him when they saw him mope thus inconsolably, and pine away without respite, till his eyes grew heavy, and his face pale and thin. He had changed all his ways; he seemed to have altered his very nature; he played no games, took no interest in anything, and dropped all his old pursuits. His work was quite spiritless, and he grew so absent that he forgot the commonest occupations of every day—living as in a waking sleep.

Power and Walter, in talking of him, often wondered whether it was the uncertainty of his future prospects which had thus affected him; and in the full belief that this must have something to do with his morbid melancholy, Power mentioned the matter to Dr Lane as soon as he had the opportunity.

Dr Lane had observed, with much pity, the depression which had fastened on Kenrick like a disease. He was not surprised to see him come back deeply affected; but if “the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” its sorrows are usually short and transient, and he looked upon it as unnatural that Kenrick’s grief should seem thus incurable, and that a young boy like him should thus refuse to be comforted. It was not long before he introduced the subject, while talking to Power after looking over his composition.

“Kenrick has just been here, Power,” he said; “it pains me to see him so sadly altered. I can hardly get him to speak a word; all things seem equally indifferent to him, and his eyes look to me as though they were always ready to overflow with tears. What can we manage to do for him? Would not a little cheerful society brighten him up? We had him here the other day, but he did not speak once the whole evening. Can’t even Henderson get him to smile somehow?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” said Power. “Henderson and Evson and I have all tried, but he seems to avoid seeing any one. It makes him ill at ease apparently. I am afraid, for one thing, that he is vexing himself about not being allowed to return, and about being sent into a merchant’s office, which he detests.”

“If that is all, there can be no difficulty about it,” said the Doctor; “we have often kept deserving boys here, when funds failed, and I can easily assure his guardian, without his knowing of it, that the expense need not for a moment stand in the way of his return.”

These generous acts are common at Saint Winifred’s, for she is indeed an alma mater to all her children; and since Kenrick had confided this particular sorrow to Walter, Walter undertook to remove it by telling him that Dr Lane would persuade his guardian to let him return. Kenrick appeared glad of the news, as though it brought him a little relief, but it made no long change in his present ways.

Nor even did a still further piece of good fortune, when his guardian wrote and told him that, on condition of his being sent to the University, an unknown and anonymous friend had placed at his disposal 100 pounds a year, to be continued until such time as he was able to maintain himself; and that this generous gift would of course permit of his receiving the advantage of an Oxford training, and obviate the necessity of his entering an office, by clearing for him the way to one of the learned professions. This news stirred him up a little, and for a time—but not for long. He looked upon it all as destiny: he could not guess, he hardly tried to surmise, who the unknown friend could be. Nor did he know till years afterwards that the aid was given by the good and wealthy Sir Lawrence Power, at his son’s earnest and generous request. For Power did this kind deed by stealth, and mentioned it to no one, not even to Walter; and Kenrick little thought when he told the good news to Power, and received his kind congratulations, that Power had known of it before he did himself. But still, in spite of all, Kenrick seemed sick at heart, and his life crept on in a sluggish course, like a river that loses its bright stream in the desert, and all whose silver runnels are choked up with dust and sand.

The fact was, that the blows of punishment had fallen on him so fast and so heavily that he felt crushed to the very earth. The expulsion of the reprobates with whom he had consorted, his degradation and censure, Wilton’s theft and removal, the violent tension and revulsion of feeling caused by his awakened conscience, his confession, and the gnawing sense of shame, the failure of his ambition, and then his mother’s death coming as the awful climax of the calamities he had undergone, and followed by the cold unfeeling harshness of his guardian, and the damping of his hopes—all these things had broken the boy’s spirit utterly. Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of remorse, and the suffering of punishment—the forfeiture of a guilty past, and the gloom of a lonely future—these things unmanned him, bowed him down, poisoned his tranquillity of mind, unhinged every energy of his soul, seemed to dry up the very springs of life. The hand of man could not rouse him from the stupor caused by the chastisements of God.

But the rousing came at last, and in due time; and it all came from a very little matter—so slight a matter as a little puff of seaward air. A trivial accident, you will say; yes, one of those very trivial accidents that so often affect the destinies of a lifetime, and:

            “Shape our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”

Kenrick, as usual, was walking along the top of the cliffs alone—restless, aimless, and miserable—“mooning,” as the boys would have called it—unable even to analyse his own thoughts, conscious only that it was folly in him to nurse this long-continued and hopeless melancholy, yet quite incapable of making the one strong effort which would have enabled him to throw it off. And in this mood he sat down near the cliff, thinking of nothing, but watching, with idle guesses as to their destination and history, the few vessels that passed by on the horizon. The evening was drawing-in, cold and windy; and suddenly remembering that he must be back by tea-time, he rose up to return. The motion displaced his straw hat, and the next moment the breeze had carried it a little way over the edge of the cliff, where it was caught in a low bush of tamarisk. It rested but a few feet below him, and the chalky front of the cliff was sufficiently rough to admit of his descent. He climbed to it, and had just succeeded in disengaging it with his foot, when before he had time to seize it, it again fell, and rolled down some thirty feet. Kenrick, finding that he had been able to get down with tolerable ease, determined to continue his descent in order to secure it. It never occurred to him that the hat was of no great importance, and that it would have been infinitely less trouble to walk home without it, and buy a new one, than to run the risk and encounter the trouble of his climb. However, he did manage to reach it, and put it on with some satisfaction, when, as he was beginning to remount, a considerable mass of chalk crumbled away under his feet, and made him cling on with both hands to avoid being precipitated. He had been able to get down well enough, because, if the chalk slipped, he glided on safely with it, but in climbing up he was obliged to press his feet strongly downwards in order to gain his spring; and every time he did this, he found that the chalk kept giving way, exhausting him with futile efforts, filling his shoes with dust and pebbles, slipping into his clothes, and blinding his eyes. Every person who has climbed at all, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, knows that it is easy enough to get down places which it is almost impossible to mount again; and Kenrick, after many attempts, found that he had been most imprudent, and becoming seriously alarmed, was forced, when he had quite tired himself with fruitless exertions and had once or twice nearly fallen, to give up the attempt altogether, and do his best to secure another way of escape.

This was to climb down quite to the bottom of the cliff, and make his way, as best he could, over rocks and shingle round the bluff which shut in one side of the little bay on which he stood, and along the narrow line of beach, to Saint Winifred’s head. This was possible sometimes, and he fancied that the tide was sufficiently far out to enable him to do it now. At any rate herein lay, so far as he saw, his only chance of safety.

Down the cliff then he climbed once more, and though it was some ninety feet high he found no difficulty in doing this, with care, till he came to a place where its surface was precipitous for a height of some ten feet, worn smooth by the beating of the waves. Holding with his hands to the edge, he let himself fall down this height, and found himself standing, a little shaken though unhurt, in a small pebbly bay or indentation of the shore formed by a curve in the line of cliffs, with a series of headlands and precipices trending away on one side far to his right, and with the Ness of Saint Winifred’s reaching out to his left. Once round that headland he would be safe, and indeed if he once got beyond the little pebbly inlet where he stood, he hoped to find some place where he might scale the rocks, and so cross the promontory and get home.

There was no time to be lost, and he ran with all his speed over the loose stones towards the bluff, letting the unlucky straw hat drop on the shore, as it had no string, and it impeded him to be obliged to hold it on with one hand. Reaching the end of the shingle, he stumbled with difficulty over some scattered rocks slimy with ooze and seagrass, hoping with intense hope that when he rounded the projection of cliff, he would see a line of beach, narrow indeed, but still wide enough to allow of his running along it before the tide had come in, and reaching some part of Saint Winifred’s Head which he might be able to scale by means of a sheep-path, or with the help of hands and knees. Very quickly he reached the corner, and hardly dared to look; but when he did look, a glance showed him that but slender hope was left. At one spot the tide had already reached the foot of the cliffs; but if he could get to that spot while the water was yet sufficiently shallow to allow him to run through it, he trusted that he might yet be saved. The place was far-off, but he ran and ran; and ever as he ran the place seemed to get farther and farther, and his knees failed him for fatigue, as he sank at every step in the noisy and yielding mixture of sand and pebbles.

Reader, have you ever run a race with the sea? If not, accept the testimony of one who has had to do it more than once, that it is a very painful and exciting race. I ran it once successfully with one who, though we then escaped, has since been overtaken and swallowed up by the great dark waves of that other sea, whose tides are ever advancing upon us, and must sooner or later absorb us all—the great dark waves of Death. But to take your life in your hand, and run and to know that the sea is gaining upon you, and that, however great the speed with which fear wings your feet, your subtle hundred-handed enemy is intercepting you with its many deep inlets, and does not bate an instant’s speed, or withhold itself a hair’s-breadth for all your danger—is an awful thing to feel. And then to see that it has intercepted you is worst of all; it is a moment not to be forgotten. And all this was what Kenrick had to undergo. He ran until he panted for breath, and stumbled for very weariness—but he was too late. A broad sheet of water now bathed the bases of the cliff, and the waves, as though angry with the opposing breeze, were leaping up with a frantic hiss, and deluging the rocks with sheets of spray and foam.

Experience had taught him with what speed and fury on that dangerous coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare, and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which he strode.

His face wetted with the salt dew, his brown hair scattered on the rising wind, he flew rather than ran once more to the place where he had descended, to renew the wild attempt to scale the cliff which seemed to afford him the only shadow of a hope. Yet a mere glance might have been enough to show him that this hope was vain. Both at that spot, and as far as he could see, the sheer base of the cliff offered him no place where it was possible to rest a foot, no place where he could mount three feet above the shingle. But his scrutiny brought home to him another appalling fact—namely, that the sea-mark, where the highest tide fringed its barriers with a triumphal wreath of hanging seaweed, and below which no foliage grew, was high up upon the cliff, far above his head.

It was too late to curse his rashness and folly, nor would he even try to face his frightful situation till he had thought of every conceivable means by which to escape. A friend of mine had, and I suppose still has, a pen-and-ink sketch which made one shudder to look at it. All that you see is a long sea-wall, apparently the side of some stone pier, so drawn as to give the impression of great height, and the top of it not visible in the picture; by the side of this ripples and plashes a long dark reach of sea water, lazily waving the weeds which it has planted in the crevices of stone, and extending, like the wall itself, farther than you can guess. The only living thing in the picture is a single spent, shaggy dog, its paws rested for a moment on a sort of hollow in the wall, and half its dripping body emergent from the dark water. It is staring up with a look of despondent exhaustion, yet mute appeal. The sketch powerfully recalls and typifies the exact position in which poor Kenrick: now found himself placed—before him the hungry, angry darkening sea, behind him the inaccessible bastions of forbidding cliff. It is a horrible predicament, and those can most thrillingly appreciate it who, like the author, have been in it themselves.

There was yet one thing, and one thing only, to be tried, and it was truly the refuge of desperation. Kenrick was an excellent swimmer; many a time in bathing at Saint Winifred’s, even when he was a little boy, he had struck out boldly far into the bay, even as far as the huge tumbling red buoy, that spent its restless life in “ever climbing with the climbing wave.” If he could swim for pleasure, could he not swim for life? It was true that the swim before him was, beyond all comparison, farther and more hazardous than he had ever dreamt of. But swimming is an art which inspires extraordinary confidence; it makes us fancy that drowning is impossible to us, because we cannot imagine ourselves so fatigued as to fail in keeping above water. Kenrick knew that the attempt was only one to be undertaken at dire extremity; but that extremity had now arrived, and it was literally the last chance that lay between him and—what he would not think of yet.

So, in the wintry air, with the strong wind blowing keenly and the red gleam of sunset already beginning to fail, he flung off his clothes on the damp beach, and as one who rushes on a forlorn hope in the teeth of an enemy, he ran down the rough uneven shore, hardly noticing how much it hurt his feet, and plunged boldly into the hideous yeast of seething waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet touched, the tangled and rotting string of sea-twine that waved about his legs, sent a strong shudder through him; and there was a sick clammy feeling about the frothy spume through which he had to plunge. But when he had once ploughed his way through all this, and was fairly out of his depth, the exercise warmed him, and he rose with a swimmer’s triumphant motion over the yielding waves. On and on he swam, thinking only of that, not looking before him; but when he began to feel quite tired, and did look, he saw that he was not nearly halfway to the headland. He saw, too, how the breakers were lashing and fighting with the iron shore which he was madly striving to reach. Even if he could swim so far—and he now felt that he could not—how could he ever land at such a spot? Would not one of those billows toss him up in its playful spray, and dash him as it dashed its own unpitied offspring, dead upon the rocks? And as this conviction dawned on him, withering all his energy of heart, the wind wailed over him, the water bubbled in his ears, and the sea-mew, napping as it flew past him, uttered above his head its plaintive scream. His heart sank within him. With a quick motion he turned in the water, and with arms wearied-out he swam back again, as for dear life, towards the little landing-place which alone divided him from instant death; struggling on heavily, with limbs so weary that he could barely move them through the waves, whose increasing swell often broke around his head. Already the tide had reached the spot where he had let his straw hat drop on the beach; the sea was scornfully playing with it, tossing it up and down, whirling it round and round like a feather; the wind blew it to the sea, and the sea, receiving no gifts from an enemy, flung it back again; but the wind carried the day, and while Kenrick was wringing the brine out of his dripping hair, and huddling his clothes again over his wet, benumbed, and aching limbs, he saw the straw hat fairly launched, and floating away over the waves.

And then it was that, as the vision of sudden death glared out before his eyes, and the horror of it leapt upon him, that a scream—a loud, wild, echoing scream, which sounded strange in that lonely place, and rose above the rude song that the wind was now singing,—broke from his blanched lips. And another, and another, and then silence; for Kenrick was now crouching at the cliff’s foot furthest off from the swelling flood, with his eyes fixed motionless in a wild stare on its advancing line of foam. He was conjuring up before his imagination the time when those waves should have reached him; should have swept him away from the shelter of the shore, or risen above his lips; should have forced him again to struggle and swim, until his strength, already impaired by hunger, and thirst, and cold, and fatigue, should have failed him altogether, and he would sink, and the water gurgle wildly in his ears, and stop his breath—and all would be still. And when he had pictured this scene to himself with a vividness which made him experience all its agony, for a time his mind flew back through all the faultful past up to that very day; memory lighted her lantern, and threw its blaze on every dark corner, on every hidden recess, every forgotten nook—left no spot unsearched, unilluminated with sudden flash; all his past sins were before him, words, looks, thoughts, everything. As when a man descends with a light in his diving-bell into the heaving sea, the strange monsters of the deep, attracted by the unknown glimmer, throng and wallow terribly around him, so did uncouth thoughts and forgotten sins welter in fearful multitudes round this light of memory in the deep sea of that poor human soul. And finally, as though in demon voices, came this message whispered to him, touted to him tauntingly, rising and falling with maddening alternation on the rising and falling of the wind—“You have been wasting your life, moodily abandoning yourself to idle misery, neglecting your duties, letting your talents rust—God will take from you the life you know not how to use.” And then, as though in answer to this, another voice, low, soft, sweet, that his heart knew well—another voice filling the interspaces of the others with unseen music, whispered to him soothingly—“It shall be given you again, use it better; awake, use it better, it shall be given you again.”

Those three wild shrieks of his had been heard; he did not know it, but they had been heard. The whole coast was in general so lonely that you could usually pace it for miles without meeting a single human being, and it never even occurred to him that some one might pass that way. But it so happened that the boisterous weather of the last few days had cast away a schooner at a place some five miles from Saint Winifred’s, and Walter Evson had walked with Charlie to see the wreck, and was returning along the cliff. As they passed the spot where Kenrick was, they had been first startled and then horrified by those shrieks, and while they stood listening another came to their ears, more piercing, more heart-rending than the rest.

“Good heavens! there must be some one down there!” exclaimed Walter.

“Why, how could any one have got there?” asked Charlie.

“Well, but didn’t you hear some one scream?”

“Yes, several times. O Walter, do look here!” Charlie pointed to the traces on the cliff showing that some one had descended there.

“Who could have wanted to get down there, I wonder; and for what possible purpose?”

“Do you see any one, Walter?”

“No, I don’t; there’s nothing but the sea”—for Kenrick, crouching under the cliff, was hidden from sight, and now the tide had come up so far that, from the summit, none of the shingle was visible—“but what’s that?”

“Why, Walter, it’s a straw hat; it must be one of our fellows down there; I see the ribbon distinctly, dark blue and white, twisted together.”

“Dark blue and white! why, then, it must be some one in the football eleven: Charlie, it must be Kenrick! Heavens, what can have happened?”

“Kenrick!” they both shouted at the top of their voices.

But the cliff was high, and the wind, momently rising to a blast, swept away their shouts, and although Kenrick might have heard them distinctly under ordinary circumstances, they now only mingled with, and gave new form and body to, the wild madness which terror was beginning to kindle in his brain. So they shouted, and no answer came.

“No answer comes, Charlie; but there’s someone down there as sure as we are here,” said Walter. Charlie had already begun to try and descend the face of the cliff. “Stop, stop, Charlie,” said Walter, seizing him and dragging him up again, “you mustn’t try that—nay, Charlie, you really must not. If it’s possible I will.” He tried, but three minutes showed him that, however practicable a descent might be, an ascent afterwards would be wholly beyond his power. Besides, if he did descend, what could he do? Clearly nothing; and with another plan in view, he with difficulty reached his former position.

“Nothing to be done that way, Charlie.” At that moment another cry came, for Kenrick, in a momentary lull of the wind, had fancied that he had heard sounds and voices other than those of his perturbed and agitated fancy. “Ha! you heard that?” said Walter, and he shouted again, but no sound was returned.

“We must fly to Saint Winifred’s, Charlie; there’s a boy down on the shore beyond a doubt. You stay behind, if you like, for you can’t run as fast as me. I’m afraid, though, it’s not the least good. Saint Winifred’s is three miles from here, and long before I’ve got help and come three miles back, it’s clear that no one can be alive down there; still we must try,” and he was starting when Charlie seized his arm.

“Don’t you remember, Walter, the hut at Bryce’s cove? There’s an old boat there, and it’s a mile and a half nearer than Saint Win’s.”

“Capital boy, Charlie,” said Walter; “how good of you to think of it; it’s the very thing. Come.”

They flew along at full speed, Walter taking Charlie’s hand, and saying, “Never mind stretching your legs for once, even if you are tired. How well you run! we shall be there in no time.”

They gained the cove, flew down the steep narrow path, and reached the hut door. Their summons was answered only by the furious barking of a dog. No one was in.

“Never mind: there’s the boat; we must take French leave;” and Walter, springing down, hastily unmoored it.

“Wah! what a horrid old tub, and it wants baling, Walter.”

“We can’t stay for that, Charlie boy; it’s a good thing that Semlyn Lake has taught us both to row, isn’t it?”

“O yes; don’t you wish we had the little Pearl here now, Walter? Wouldn’t we make it fly, instead of this cranky old wretch.”

“Well, we must fancy that this is the Pearl and this Semlyn Lake,” said Walter, wading up to the knees to launch the boat, and springing in when he had given it the final shove.

They were excellent rowers, but Charlie had never tried his skill in a sea like that, and was timid, for which there was every excuse.

“How very rough it is, Walter,” he said, as the boat tossed up and down like an egg-shell on the high waves.

“Keep up your heart, Charlie, and row steadily; don’t be afraid.”

“No, Walter, I won’t, as you’re with me; but—Walter?”

“Well?”

“It’ll be dark in half an hour.”

“Not quite, and we shall be there by that time; we needn’t go far out, and the tide’s with us.” So the two brave brothers rowed steadily on, with only one more remark from Charlie, ushered in by the word—

“Walter?”

“Anything more to frighten me with, Charlie?” he answered cheerily; “you shan’t succeed.”

“Well, Walter,” he answered, with a little touch of shame, “I was only going to say that, if you look, you’ll see that your oar’s been broken, and is only spliced together.”

“I’ve seen it all along, Charlie, and will use the oar gingerly; and now, Charlie, I see you’re a little frightened, my boy. I’m going to brace you up. Rest on your oar a minute.”

He did so. “Now turn round and look.”

He pointed with his finger to a dark figure, now distinctly seen, cowering low at the white cliff’s foot.

“O Walter, I’m ready; I won’t say a word more;” and he leant to his oar, and plied it like a man.

It is a pretty, a delightful thing, in idle summer-time to lie at full length upon the beach on some ambrosial summer evening, when a glow floats over the water, whose calm surface is tenderly rippled with gold and blue. And while the children play beside you, dabbling and paddling in the wavelets, and digging up the ridges of yellow sand, which take the print of their pattering footsteps, nothing is more pleasant than to let the transparent stream of the quiet tide plash musically with its light and motion to your very feet; nothing more pleasant than to listen to its silken murmurs, and to watch it flow upwards with its beneficent coolness, and take possession of the shore. But it is a very different thing when there rises behind you a wall of frowning cliff, precipitous, inaccessible, affording no hope of refuge; and when, for the golden calm of summer eventide, you have the cheerless drawing-in of a loud and stormy February night; and when you have the furious hissing violence of rock-and-wind-struck breakers for the violet-coloured margin of rippling waves—knowing that the wind is wailing forth your requiem, and that, with the fall of every breaker, unseen hands are ringing your knell of death.

The boy crouched there, his face white as the cliffs above him, his undried limbs almost powerless for cold, and his clothes wetted through and through with spray—pushing aside every moment the dripping locks of hair which the wind scattered over his forehead, that he might look with hollow, staring eyes on the Death which was advancing towards him, wrapping him already in its huge mantle-folds, calling aloud to him, beckoning him, freezing him to the very bone with the touch of its icy hands.

And the brutal tide coming on, according to the pitiless irreversible certainty of the fixed laws that governed it—coming on like a huge wallowing monster, dumb and blind—knew not, and recked not, of the young life that quivered on the verge of its advance—that it was about to devour remorselessly, with no wrath to satiate, with no hunger to appease. None the less for the boy’s presence, unregardful of his growing horror and wild suspense, it continued its uncouth play—leaping about the rocks, springing upwards and stretching high hands to pluck down the cliffs, seeming to laugh as it fell back shattered and exhausted, but unsubdued; charging up sometimes like a herd of white horses, bounding one over the other, shaking their foaming manes—hissing sometimes like a brood of huge sea-serpents, as it insinuated it winding streams among the boulders of the shore.

It might have seemed to be in sport with him as it ran first up to his feet, and playfully splashed him, as a bather might splash a person on the shore from head to heel, and then ran back again for a moment, and then up again a little farther, till, as he sat on the extreme line of the shore and with his back huddled up close against the cliff, it first wetted the soles of his feet, and then was over his shoes, then ankle-deep, then knee deep, then to the waist. Already it seemed to buoy him up; he knew that in a few moments more he would be forced to swim, and the last struggle would commence.

His brain was dull, his senses blunted, his mind half-idiotic, when first (for his eyes had been fixed downwards on the growing, encroaching waters) he caught a glimpse, in the failing daylight, of the black outline of a boat, not twenty yards from him, and caught the sound of its plashing oars. He stared eagerly at it, and just as it came beside him he lost all his strength, uttered a faint cry, and slipped down fainting into the waves.