After a few vain efforts I lay quite still again, trying to deliberate
as well as I could for the pain which racked me. I reckoned up, after
many attempts in which first my memory failed me, and then my faculty of
calculation, what the time of the high tide would be, and how soon
Tardif would come home. As nearly as I could make out, it would be high
water in about two hours. Tardif had set off at low water, as his boat
had been anchored at the foot of the rock, where the ladder hung; but
before starting he had said something about returning at high tide, and
running up his boat on the beach of our little bay. If he did that, he
must pass close by me. It was Saturday morning, and he was not in the
habit of staying out late on Saturdays, that he might prepare for the
services of the next day. I might count, then, upon the prospect of him
running the boat into the bay, and finding me there in about two hours'
time.

It took me a very long time to make out all this, for every now and then
my brain seemed to lose its power for a while, and every thing whirled
about me. Especially there was that awful sensation of sinking down,
down through the pebbles into some chasm that was bottomless. I had
never either felt pain or fainted before, and all this alarmed me.

Presently I began to listen to the rustle of the pebbles, as the rising
tide flowed over them and fell back again, leaving them all ajar and
grating against one another--strange, gurgling, jangling sound that
seemed to have some meaning. It was very cold, and a creeping moisture
was oozing up from the water. A vague wonder took hold of me as to
whether I was really above the line of the tide, for, now the March
tides were come, I did not know how high their flood was. But I thought
of it without any active feeling of terror or pain. I was numbed in body
and mind. The ceaseless chime of the waves, and the regularity of the