the far end of the cave.

With a dreadful hollow sucking sound the surge retreated. I
staggered again toward the archway that was my only door to life.
The water was deeper now, and swiftly came another fierce inrush of
the sea that drove me back. Between the two archways a terrible
current was setting. It poured along with the rush of a mountain
river, wild, dark, tumultuous.

I had fled to the far end of the cave, but the sea pursued me.
Swiftly the water climbed--it flung me against the wall, then
dragged me back. I clutched at the naked rock with bleeding
fingers.

Again, after a paroxysm during which I had seemed to stand a great
way off and listen to my own shrieks, there came to me a moment of
calm. I knew that my one tenuous thread of hope lay in launching
myself into that wild flood that was tearing through into the cove.
I was not a strong swimmer, but a buoyant one. I might find refuge
on some half-submerged rock on the shores of the cove--at least I
should perish in the open, in the sunlight, not trapped like a
desperate rat. And I began to fight my way toward the opening.

And then a dreadful vision flashed across my mind, weighed down my
feet like lead, choked back even the cry from my frozen lips.
Sharks! The black cutting fin, the livid belly, the dreadful jaws
opening--no, no, better to die here, better the clean embrace of
the waters--_if indeed the sharks did not come into the cave_.

And then I think I went quite mad. I remember trying to climb up
to the ledge which hung beetling fifteen feet above. Afterward my
poor hands showed how desperately. And I remember that once I
slipped and went clear under, and how I choked and strangled in the
salt water. For my mouth was always open, screaming, screaming
continually.

And when I saw the boat fighting its way inch by inch into the cave
I was sure that it was a vision, and that only my own wild
beseeching of him to save me had made the face of Dugald Shaw arise
before my dying eyes. Dugald Shaw was still mending the boat on
the shore of the cove, and this was a mocking phantom.

Only the warm human clasp of the arms that drew me into the boat
made me believe in him.

The boat bobbed quietly in the eddy at the far end of the cave,
while a wet, sobbing, choking heap clung to Dugald Shaw. I clasped
him about the neck and would not let him go, for fear that I should
find myself alone again, perishing in the dark water. My head was