It was my purpose to get to Penzance by night.  Beyond that, I had no project, no thought of what refuge I should seek next.  Any hope I might have formerly felt of escaping from Mannion, had now deserted me for ever.  I could not discover by any outward indications, that he was still following my footsteps.  The mist obscured all objects behind me from view; the ceaseless crashing of the shore-waves overwhelmed all landward sounds, but I never doubted for a moment that he was watching me, as I proceeded along my onward way.

I walked slowly, keeping from the edge of the precipices only by keeping the sound of the sea always at the same distance from my ear; knowing that I was advancing in the proper direction, though very circuitously, as long as I heard the waves on my right hand.  To have ventured on the shorter way, by the moor and the cross-roads beyond it, would have been only to have lost myself past all chance of extrication, in the mist.

In this tedious manner I had gone on for some time, before it struck me that the noise of the sea was altering completely to my sense of hearing.  It seemed to be sounding very strangely on each side of me—­both on my right hand and on my left.  I stopped and strained my eyes to look through the mist, but it was useless.  Crags only a few yards off, seemed like shadows in the thick white vapour.  Again, I went on a little; and, ere long, I heard rolling towards me, as it were, under my own feet, and under the roaring of the sea, a howling, hollow, intermittent sound—­like thunder at a distance.  I stopped again, and rested against a rock.  After some time, the mist began to part to seaward, but remained still as thick as ever on each side of me.  I went on towards the lighter sky in front—­the thunder-sound booming louder and louder, in the very heart, as it seemed, of the great cliff.

The mist brightened yet a little more, and showed me a landmark to ships, standing on the highest point of the surrounding rocks.  I climbed to it, recognised the glaring red and white pattern in which it was painted, and knew that I had wandered, in the mist, away from the regular line of coast, out on one of the great granite promontories which project into the sea, as natural breakwaters, on the southern shore of Cornwall.

I had twice penetrated as far as this place, at the earlier period of my sojourn in the fishing-hamlet, and while I now listened to the thunder-sound, I knew from what cause it proceeded.

Beyond the spot where I stood, the rocks descended suddenly, and almost perpendicularly, to the range below them.  In one of the highest parts of the wall-side of granite thus formed, there opened a black, yawning hole that slanted nearly straight downwards, like a tunnel, to unknown and unfathomable depths below, into which the waves found entrance through some subterranean channel.  Even at calm times the sea was never silent in this frightful abyss, but on stormy days its fury was terrific.  The wild waves boiled and thundered in their imprisonment, till they seemed to convulse the solid cliff about them, like an earthquake.  But, high as they leapt up in the rocky walls of the chasm, they never leapt into sight from above.  Nothing but clouds of spray indicated to the eye, what must be the horrible tumult of the raging waters below.