Mr. Puddlebox said aloud, in a whisper: "The tide!" It was the first time since he had started out that he had thought of it. He looked along the cliff. From where he stood, from where these rocky piers began, the cliff, as he saw, began to stand outwards in a long bluff. The further one went, the further the tide would.... He carried his eyes a little to sea. Beneath the moon were white, uneasy lines. That was where the sea swirled upon the barriers. He looked downwards and saw the placid water welling, swelling beneath his feet. "The tide," said Mr. Puddlebox again, again in a whisper. He swallowed something that rose in his throat. He ran his tongue around his lips, for they were dry. He shivered, for the perspiration his long walk had induced now seemed to be running down his body in very cold drops. He looked straight above him and at once down to his feet again and moved his feet in steadying of his balance: a sense of giddiness came from looking up that towering height that towered so steeply as to appear hanging over him. He looked along the way he had come; and he stood so close to the cliff-face, and it bulked so enormously before him, that the bay he had traversed seemed, by contrast, to sweep back immensely far--immensely safe. Mr. Puddlebox watched that safety with unmoving eyes as though he were fascinated by it. The longer he watched the more it seemed to draw him. He kept his eyes upon one distant spot, half way along the bay and high up the shore, and his hypnotic state presented him to himself sitting there--safe. Still with his eyes upon it he moved across the narrow pier in its direction and sat down, legs dangling towards the bay, in the first action of descending. He twisted about to pursue the action, for he was a timid and unhandy climber who would climb downwards facing his hold. As he came to his hands and knees he went forward on them and looked across the fifty yards of shingle-bank, the sea close up, that separated him from the next pier of rocks. He was a creature of fear as he knelt there--a very figure of very ugly fear, ungainly in his form that hung bulkily between his arms and legs, white and loosely fat in his face that peered timorously over the edge, cowardly and useless in his crouching, shrinking pose. He said aloud, his eyes on the distant barrier: "I'm as safe there--for a peep--as I am here. I can get back. Even if I get wet I can get back." He shuffled forward and this time put his legs over the other side and sat a while. Here the drop was not more than three feet beneath the soles of his boots as they dangled. He drew them up. "If he's safe, he's safe," said Mr. Puddlebox. "And if he's drowned, he's drowned. Where's the sense of--"