there was that awful sensation of sinking down,
down through the pebbles into some chasm that was bottomless. I had
never either felt pain or fainted before, and all this alarmed me.

Presently I began to listen to the rustle of the pebbles, as the rising
tide flowed over them and fell back again, leaving them all ajar and
grating against one another--strange, gurgling, jangling sound that
seemed to have some meaning. It was very cold, and a creeping moisture
was oozing up from the water. A vague wonder took hold of me as to
whether I was really above the line of the tide, for, now the March
tides were come, I did not know how high their flood was. But I thought
of it without any active feeling of terror or pain. I was numbed in body
and mind. The ceaseless chime of the waves, and the regularity of the
rustling play of the pebbles, seemed to lull and soothe me, almost in
spite of myself. Cold I was, and in sharp pain, but my mind had not
energy enough either for fear or effort. What appeared to me most
terrible was the sensation, coming back time after time, of sinking,
sinking into the fancied chasm beneath me.

I remember also watching a spray of ivy, far above my head, swaying and
waving about in the wind; and a little bird, darting here and there with
a brisk flutter of its tiny wings, and a chirping note of satisfaction;
and the cloud drifting in soft, small cloudlets across the sky. These
things I saw, not as if they were real, but rather as if they were
memories of things that had passed before my eyes many years before.

At last--- whether years or hours only had gone by, I could not then
have told you--I heard the regular and careful beat of oars upon the
water, and presently the grating of a boat's keel upon the shingle, with
the rattle of a chain cast out with the grapnel. I could not turn round
or raise my head, but I was sure it was Tardif, and that he did not yet
see me, for he was whistling softly to himself. I had never heard him
whistle before.

"Tardif!" I cried, attempting to shout, but my voice sounded very weak
in my own ears, and the other sounds about me seemed very loud. He went
on with his unlading, half whistling and half humming his tune, as he
landed the nets and creel on the beach.

"Tardif!" I called again, summoning all my strength, and raising my head
an inch or two from the hard pebbles which had been its resting-place.

He paused then, and stood quite still, listening. I knew it, t