Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Fiction; English fiction; Xhosa (African people) -- Fiction
He fancied he heard voices, he looked down. Immediately under his feet
there were, as it seemed, phantoms floating by; some dead, some with
agonised faces and beseeching hands lifted out of the white foam, and
one saw him--she was young and fair, with long tresses, all unbound,
clinging round her white throat and bosom; she seemed to give a gasp of
hope; he leaned over; hardened man as he was, he would have given much
to have saved her; the swell brought her nearer, she saw him; still she
herself tried with desperate energy to catch a ridge of rocks,--she
reached it, the heavy waters swung her forward with terrific violence,
the sweet face was lifted up again. Lee was about to cast himself at
all hazards from his position, when a stream of blood darkened the white
spray, and the head of a shark came up, its huge jaws were filled with
the mangled and bleeding limbs of its victim, and the horrible
sea-monster drew its prey into an inlet where it had been driven by the
storm.
He buried his face in his hands, turned sick, and almost fainted; after
this he looked no more towards the sea, and ere long found himself
obliged, for safety's sake, to reconnoitre the locality in which he had
awoke to consciousness after so narrow an escape.
His condition was forlorn enough; his clothes hung in shreds upon him,
his hair was matted with brine, his body was sorely bruised, his hands
and feet lacerated; but it must be confessed, that, in spite of the
horrors he had witnessed, his spirits rose fresh and buoyant, as he
remembered that he was at liberty; though houseless, naked, cold,
hungry, and bleeding, it was not in his nature to despair.
He turned his eyes again to the westward, and on climbing higher, he
discovered the wall of the fort, with its tower in the angle and its
looped parapet. Soldiers were still straggling up and down the cliff,
intent, as they had been for hours, on their humane efforts in saving
life, and the remnant of property which had been thrown ashore with the
tide.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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