he spray flew out once more; and
when it cleared off; nothing was to be seen at the yawning mouth of the
chasm--nothing moved over the shelving granite, but some torn particles
of sea-weed sliding slowly downwards in the running ooze.

The shock of that sight must have paralysed within me the power of
remembering what followed it; for I can recall nothing, after looking
on the emptiness of the rock below, except that I crouched on the ledge
under my feet, to save myself from falling off it--that there was an
interval of oblivion--and that I seemed to awaken again, as it were, to
the thundering of the water in the abyss. When I rose and looked around
me, the seaward sky was lovely in its clearness; the foam of the leaping
waves flashed gloriously in the sunlight: and all that remained of the
mist was one great cloud of purple shadow, hanging afar off over the
whole inland view.

I traced my way back along the promontory feebly and slowly. My weakness
was so great, that I trembled in every limb. A strange uncertainty about
directing myself in the simplest actions, overcame my mind. Sometimes, I
stopped short, hesitating in spite of myself at the slightest obstacles
in my path. Sometimes, I grew confused without any cause, about the
direction in which I was proceeding, and fancied I was going back to the
fishing village.. The sight that I had witnessed, seemed to be affecting
me physically, far more than mentally. As I dragged myself on my weary
way along the coast, there was always the same painful vacancy in
my thoughts: there seemed to be no power in them yet, of realising
Mannion's appalling death.

By the time I arrived at this village, my strength was so utterly
exhausted, that the people at the inn were obliged to help me upstairs.
Even now, after some hours' rest, the mere exertion of dipping my pen
in the ink begins to be a labour and a pain to me. There is a strange
fluttering at my heart; my recollections are growing confused again--I
can write no more.

23rd.--The frightful scene that I witnessed yesterday still holds the
same disastrous influence over me. I have vainly endeavoured to think,
not of Mannion's death, but of the free prospect which that death has
opened to my view. Waking or sleeping, it is as if some fatality kept
all my faculties imprisoned within the black walls of the chasm. I saw
the livid, bleeding hands flying past them again, in my dreams, last
night. And now, while the morning is clea