stuck out like eagle's toes, and his pale, broken
pulp of a head, and attempt striking me; and then I would awaken with a
start, cling to my companion, and remember that the drowned sailor had
lain festering among the identical bunches of sea-weed that still rotted
on the beach not a stone-cast away. The near neighbourhood of a score of
living bandits would have inspired less horror than the recollection of
that one dead seaman.

Towards midnight the sky cleared and the wind fell, and the moon, in her
last quarter, rose red as a mass of heated iron out of the sea. We crept
down, in the uncertain light, over the rough slippery crags, to
ascertain whether the tide had not fallen sufficiently far to yield us a
passage; but we found the waves chafing among the rocks just where the
tide-line had rested twelve hours before, and a full fathom of sea
enclasping the base of the promontory. A glimmering idea of the real
nature of our situation at length crossed my mind. It was not
imprisonment for a tide to which we had consigned ourselves, it was
imprisonment for a week. There was little comfort in the thought,
arising, as it did, amid the chills and terrors of a dreary midnight;
and I looked wistfully on the sea as our only path of escape. There was
a vessel crossing the wake of the moon at the time, scarce half a mile
from the shore; and, assisted by my companion, I began to shout at the
top of my lungs, in the hope of being heard by the sailors. We saw her
dim bulk falling slowly athwart the red glittering belt of light that
had rendered her visible, and then disappearing in the murky blackness,
and just as we lost sight of her for ever, we could hear an indistinct
sound mingling with the dash of the waves--the shout, in reply, of the
startled helmsman. The vessel, as we afterwards learned, was a large
stone-lighter, deeply laden, and unfurnished with a boat; nor were her
crew at all sure that it would have been safe to attend to the midnight
voice from amid the rocks, even had they had the means of communication
with the shore. We waited on and on, however, now shouting by turns, and
now shouting together; but there was no second reply; and at length,
losing hope, we groped our way back to our comfortless bed, just as the
tide had again turned on the beach, and the waves began to roll upwards
higher and higher at every dash.

As the moon rose and brightened, the dead seaman became less
troublesome; and I had succeeded in d