shelved in for some way on each side of the projecting entrance, and if I gained the foot of the cliffs I feared that I must inevitably be dashed to pieces before reaching the opening.  In the calmest weather on the coast, exposed to all the fury of the Atlantic, the spring tides come in with a heavy swell; on this occasion they were aided by the wind, and I had to retreat with precipitation before an angry and threatening mass of waves, which broke many feet over the spot I occupied the moment before, with a noise like a discharge of artillery.

The night was gathering in, and the report of each successive wave, fraught as it were with my death warrant, struck on my heart like a funeral knell.  Was there no hope of escape in the cove itself? no difficult path to the rocks aloft? were the questions I rapidly put to myself.  An examination made as well as the darkness of the place permitted, convinced me that my hopes were vain and transitory.  I now gave way to a sort of momentary despair; every instant was abridging my chance of life, and the sudden and frightful feeling that you are to be called on unprepared, to die, rushed on my mind with a choking sensation.  I listened for some time at the entrance of one of the caverns, which the violence of the sea had excavated in picturesque confusion round the foot of the cliffs, to the sullen moaning and dashing of the tide, when my attention was rivetted by the sweet music of a female voice on the heights above, singing in a wild and elevated strain.  It came over me with a sense so deep and clear, that I listened for a few minutes as if my life were in every note.  At this instant a fishing boat passed under sail near the mouth of the cove.  I shouted with despair, but my voice was lost in the echo of the rocks; it passed fleeting by, and with it my last chance of life.  The shout had aroused the strange singer; she arose, advanced to the very extremity of the precipice, where one quiver would have been certain death, and flinging her arms towards the ocean, called out as I imagined from her gestures, to some imagined form.  What could this fair apparition mean?  I distinctly saw her tall white figure and hair on the sky line (for the moon was near rising) fluttering in the wind.  She must either be mad or a spirit, I exclaimed, shouting again and again to her for help; but either my words were lost in the distance, or she regarded them not, for she seated herself, and began to sing in the same wild style as before.  This was most extraordinary:  a momentary tinge of superstition passed across my mind, but it was speedily dissipated by the exclusive feelings of my situation.  Slowly did I see the waves dashing forward to their destined goal, hemming in every chance of escape.  I retreated step by step till I reached the shingles, as if greedy of the space which measured out to me my last race of life.  My existence was in a span.  Great God!  I exclaimed, am I then to perish thus—­“without