I began to climb to the higher range of rocks almost at the same spot by which I had descended from them—­judging by the close thunder of the water in the chasm.  Halfway up, I stopped at a broad resting-place; and found that I must proceed a little, either to the right or to the left, in a horizontal direction, before I could easily get higher.  At that moment, the mist was slowly brightening again.  I looked first to the left, to see where I could get good foothold—­then to the right, towards the outer sides of the riven rocks close at hand.

At the same instant, I caught sight dimly of the figure of Mannion, moving shadow-like below and beyond me, skirting the farther edge of the slippery plane of granite that shelved into the gaping mouth of the hole.  The brightening atmosphere showed him that he had risked himself, in the mist, too near to a dangerous place.  He stopped—­looked up and saw me watching him—­raised his hand—­and shook it threateningly in the air.  The ill-calculated violence of his action, in making that menacing gesture, destroyed his equilibrium—­he staggered—­tried to recover himself—­swayed half round where he stood—­then fell heavily backward, right on to the steep shelving rock.

The wet sea-weed slipped through his fingers, as they madly clutched at it.  He struggled frantically to throw himself towards the side of the declivity; slipping further and further down it at every effort.  Close to the mouth of the abyss, he sprang up as if he had been shot.  A tremendous jet of spray hissed out upon him at the same moment.  I heard a scream, so shrill, so horribly unlike any human cry, that it seemed to silence the very thundering of the water.  The spray fell.  For one instant, I saw two livid and bloody hands tossed up against the black walls of the hole, as he dropped into it.  Then, the waves roared again fiercely in their hidden depths; the spray flew out once more; and when it cleared off; nothing was to be seen at the yawning mouth of the chasm—­nothing moved over the shelving granite, but some torn particles of sea-weed sliding slowly downwards in the running ooze.

The shock of that sight must have paralysed within me the power of remembering what followed it; for I can recall nothing, after looking on the emptiness of the rock below, except that I crouched on the ledge under my feet, to save myself from falling off it—­that there was an interval of oblivion—­and that I seemed to awaken again, as it were, to the thundering of the water in the abyss.  When I rose and looked around me, the seaward sky was lovely in its clearness; the foam of the leaping waves flashed gloriously in the sunlight:  and all that remained of the mist was one great cloud of purple shadow, hanging afar off over the whole inland view.