groping for it on the stones. The roar of the sea was terrible and
imminent, like the roar of a destroying monster racing upon its prey,
and from the caves there came a hollow groaning as of chained spirits
under the earth.

The light flashed away again just as he spied his treasure on the brink
of the dashing water. He sprang to save it, intent upon naught else;
but in that instant there came a roar such as he had not heard before--a
sound so compelling, so nerve-shattering, that even he was arrested,
entrapped as it were by a horror of crashing elements that made him
wonder if all the fiends in hell were fighting for his soul. And, as he
paused, the swirl of a great wave caught him in the darkness like the
blow of a concrete thing, nearly flinging him backwards. He staggered,
for the first time stricken with fear, and then in the howling uproar of
that dreadful place there came to him like a searchlight wheeling
inwards the thought of the girl. The water receded from him, leaving him
drenched, almost dazed, but a voice within--an urgent, insistent
voice--clamoured that his safety was at stake, his life a matter of mere
moments if he lingered. This was the Death Current of which Rufus had
warned him only that afternoon. Had not the bell-buoy been tolling to
deaf ears for some time past? The Death Current that came like a tidal
wave! And nothing could live in it. The girl--surely the girl had been
washed off her ledge and overwhelmed in the flood before it had reached
him. Possibly Rufus would manage to save her, for that it was Rufus who
had so savagely sprung upon him he had no doubt; but he himself was
powerless. If he saved his own life it would be by a miracle. Had not
the fellow warned him that retreat by way of the cliff-path would be cut
off in thirty seconds when the tide raced up like that? And if he failed
to reach that, only the quicksand was left--the quicksand that dragged
a man down quicker than hell!