w away my cigar, and
went back again to the rocks.

My directions in the memorandum instructed me to feel along the line
traced by the stick, beginning with the end which was nearest to the
beacon.

I advanced, in this manner, more than half way along the stick, without
encountering anything but the edges of the rocks. An inch or two further
on, however, my patience was rewarded. In a narrow little fissure, just
within reach of my forefinger, I felt the chain. Attempting, next,
to follow it, by touch, in the direction of the quicksand, I found my
progress stopped by a thick growth of seaweed--which had fastened itself
into the fissure, no doubt, in the time that had elapsed since Rosanna
Spearman had chosen her hiding-place.

It was equally impossible to pull up the seaweed, or to force my hand
through it. After marking the spot indicated by the end of the stick
which was placed nearest to the quicksand, I determined to pursue
the search for the chain on a plan of my own. My idea was to "sound"
immediately under the rocks, on the chance of recovering the lost trace
of the chain at the point at which it entered the sand. I took up the
stick, and knelt down on the brink of the South Spit.

In this position, my face was within a few feet of the surface of the
quicksand. The sight of it so near me, still disturbed at intervals by
its hideous shivering fit, shook my nerves for the moment. A horrible
fancy that the dead woman might appear on the scene of her suicide, to
assist my search--an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the
heaving surface of the sand, and point to the place--forced itself into
my mind, and turned me cold in the warm sunlight. I own I closed my eyes
at the moment when the point of the stick first entered the quicksand.

The instant afterwards, before the stick could have been submerged more
than a few inches, I was free from the hold of my own superstitious
terror, and was throbbing with excitement from head to foot. Sounding
blindfold, at my first attempt--at that first attempt I had sounded
right! The stick struck the chain.

Taking a firm hold of the roots of the seaweed with my left hand, I
laid myself down over the brink, and felt with my right hand under the
overhanging edges of the rock. My right hand found the chain.

I drew it up without the slightest difficulty. And there was the
japanned tin case fastened to the end of it.

The action of the water had so rusted the chain, th