My idea was to "sound"
immediately under the rocks, on the chance of recovering the lost trace
of the chain at the point at which it entered the sand. I took up the
stick, and knelt down on the brink of the South Spit.
In this position, my face was within a few feet of the surface of the
quicksand. The sight of it so near me, still disturbed at intervals by
its hideous shivering fit, shook my nerves for the moment. A horrible
fancy that the dead woman might appear on the scene of her suicide, to
assist my search--an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the
heaving surface of the sand, and point to the place--forced itself into
my mind, and turned me cold in the warm sunlight. I own I closed my eyes
at the moment when the point of the stick first entered the quicksand.
The instant afterwards, before the stick could have been submerged more
than a few inches, I was free from the hold of my own superstitious
terror, and was throbbing with excitement from head to foot. Sounding
blindfold, at my first attempt--at that first attempt I had sounded
right! The stick struck the chain.
Taking a firm hold of the roots of the seaweed with my left hand, I
laid myself down over the brink, and felt with my right hand under the
overhanging edges of the rock.
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