The place opened out right and left, and as his eyes grew more used to the gloom he found himself in a rugged chamber rising many feet above his head and continuing in a narrow rift right on into the darkness. Where he stood the water was about three feet deep, and his feet rested on soft sand, while, as he continually groped along sidewise, he found the water shallowed. Then another wave rushed in, darkening the place slightly, and it seemed to pass him, and to go on and on into the depths of the narrow rift onward, and return. The tide he knew was falling, so that some hours must elapse before there was any clanger of his being shut in and deprived of air, while there was the possibility of the cavern being secure in that respect, and remaining always sufficiently open for him to breathe. But there were other dangers. There might be enough air, but too much water, and at the next tide he might be shut in and drowned. Then there was starvation staring him in the face. But on the other side there was a balance to counteract all this; he had found sanctuary, and as long as he liked to make this place his refuge he felt that he would be safe. The waves came and went, always pursuing their way along a rift-like channel inward, while he cautiously groped his way along to the left into the darkness, with the water shallowing, and his hands as he went on, bent nearly double, splashing in the water or feeling the rough, rocky wall, which at times he could not reach, on account of the masses projecting at the foot. The place was evidently fairly spacious, and minute by minute, as more of the outer sunshine penetrated, and his eyes grew accustomed to the place, it became filled with a dim greenish light, just sufficient to show him the dripping roof about ten feet above him, while all below was black. All at once, as he waded in with the water now to his knees, his hands touched something wet, cold, and yielding, and he started back in horror, with the splashing noise he made echoing strangely from the roof. For the moment his imagination conjured up the form of some hideous sea-monster, which must make the zorn its home, but once more sense and experience of the coast told him that the creature he had touched must be a seal, and that the animal, probably more frightened than he was himself, had escaped now out into the open water. A couple of yards farther and he was on dry sand, while, on feeling about, he found that the side of the cave had been reached, and that he could climb up over piled-up rocks heaped with sand till he could touch the roof.