And yet at first, wild as my terror was, I had no thought but that
somehow I could escape. That these waters were for me the very
face of death, sure and relentless, terrible and slow, did not at
once seize hold upon my heart.
Frantically I sprang for the entrance on the cove. The floor of
the cave was sloping, and the water deepened swiftly as I advanced.
Soon I was floundering to my knees, and on the instant a great wave
rushed in, drenching me to the waist, dazing me with its spray and
uproar, and driving me back to 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.
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