see my way well
before me. The atmosphere was still brightening slowly over the tossing,
distant waves: I determined to wait until it had lost all its obscurity,
before I ventured to retrace my steps.

I moved down towards the lower range of rocks, to seek a less exposed
position than that which I now occupied. As I neared the chasm, the
terrific howling of the waves inside it was violent enough to drown,
not only the crashing sound of the surf on the outward crags of the
promontory, but even the shrill cries of the hundreds on hundreds
of sea-birds that whirled around me, except when their flight was
immediately over my head. At each side of the abyss, the rocks, though
very precipitous, afforded firm hold for hand and foot. As I descended
them, the morbid longing to look on danger, which has led many a man
to the very brink of a precipice, even while he dreaded it, led me to
advance as near as I durst to the side of the great hole, and to gaze
down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior
walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out from
them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly to
and fro in empty space--I could see but little of these things, for the
spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below, steamed up
almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds out of the
mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat rock, covered with sea-weed, that
lay beneath and in front of it. The very sight of this smooth, slippery
plane of granite, shelving steeply downward, right into the gaping
depths of the hole, made my head swim; the thundering of the water
bewildered and deafened me--I moved away while I had the power: away,
some thirty or forty yards in a lateral direction, towards the edges of
the promontory which looked down on the sea. Here, the rocks rose again
in wild shapes, forming natural caverns and penthouses. Towards one of
these I now advanced, to shelter myself till the sky had cleared.

I had just entered the place, close to the edge of the cliff, when a
hand was laid suddenly and firmly on my arm; and, through the crashing
of the waves below, the thundering of the water in the abyss behind,
and the shrieking of the seabirds overhead, I heard these words, spoken
close to my ear:--

"Take care of your life. It is not your's to throw away--it is _mine!_"

I turned, and saw Mannion standing by me. No shade concealed the hideou