It was a fearful struggle between reason and dread; and for ever dread kept getting the upper hand: now it was a floating keg again and again making me dash away now one of the packages hurried in by the tide; while the strange drippings and hollow whisperings were magnified into an infinity of horrors. Every monster with which imagination has peopled the sea seemed to be there to attack me--strange serpent or lizard like beasts, slimy and scaled, thronging along the ceiling or up the sides, swimming around me, or burrowing through the sand. More than once I actually touched some swimming object, but the contact was momentary, and the stranger darted off. Then reason would gain supremacy for a while; and trying to cool my throbbing brow with the water, I thought of my position, whispered a few prayers, and endeavoured to compose myself. There was even now a doubt: the tide might not rise high enough to cover me; certainly it was now at my breast, and I was standing with difficulty in the shallowest place I could pick. The next moment, as the waves receded, it would fall to my waist; but again it was up to my chest, and in spite of gleams of hope, despair whispered truly that it was now higher up my chest than before. True; but one wave in so many always came higher than the others. The tide might still be at its height, and this be that particular wave. I moved again and again, but ever with the same result; and at last, despairingly, I was clinging to a shell-covered piece of timber at the side, with the water at my chin. A noise, a clanking noise as of chains rattling and iron striking iron; and now hope fled, for I knew that this must be the opening of the doors of the gowt; but, to my surprise, no rush of water followed; only a little came, which lapped against my lips, while a rush of air smote my forehead. Voices, shouts, and Hodson's name uttered; but I could not shout in reply. Then my own name; and I gave some inarticulate cry by way of answer, while once more reason seemed to get the better of the dread, for I knew that the far doors of the gowt had not been opened, and that they kept up the drainage, while the pair nearest to me had only had the pressure upon them of the water escaping from the first. And now a good bold swim, and I could have been in the big pit-like opening between the two pairs of gates; but the spirit was gone, the nerve was absent and still clinging to the shelly piece of timber, I closed my eyes, for I felt that near as rescue seemed, I could do nothing to aid it. As for Hodson, in this time of dread, I had forgotten him--forgotten all but the great horror of the water lap, lap, lapping at my lip, and occasionally receding, its fizzing spray in my nostrils.