The cave seemed the friendliest place he had yet found.
Earth herself had received him into her dark bosom,
where no eye could discover him, and no voice reach
him but that of the ocean, as it tossed and wallowed
in the palm of God’s hand. He heard its
roar on the rocks around him; and the air was filled
with a loud noise of broken waters, while every now
and then the wind rushed with a howl into the cave,
as if searching for him in its crannies; the wild raving
soothed him, and he felt as if he would gladly sit
there, in the dark torn with tumultuous noises, until
his fate had unfolded itself.
The noises thickened around him as the tide rose;
but so gradually that, although at length he could
not have heard his own voice, he was unaware of the
magnitude to which the mighty uproar had enlarged
itself. Suddenly, something smote the rock as
with the hammer of Thor, and, as suddenly, the air
around him grew stifling hot. The next moment
it was again cold. He started to his feet in wonder,
and sought the light. As he turned the angle,
the receding back of a huge green foam spotted wave,
still almost touching the roof of the cavern, was
sweeping out again into the tumult. It had filled
the throat of it, and so compressed the air within
by the force of its entrance, as to drive out for
the moment a large portion of its latent heat.
Looking then at his watch, Malcolm judged it must
be about high tide: brooding in the darkness,
he had allowed the moments to lapse unheeded, and
it was now impossible to leave the cavern until the
tide had fallen. He returned into its penetral,
and sitting down with the patience of a fisherman,
again lost himself in reverie.
The darkness kept him from perceiving how the day
went, and the rapidly increasing roar of the wind
made the diminishing sound of the tide’s retreat
less noticeable. He thought afterwards that perhaps
he had fallen asleep; anyhow, when at length he looked
out, the waves were gone from the rock, and the darkness
was broken only by the distant gleam of their white
defeat. The wind was blowing a hurricane, and
even for his practised foot, it was not easy to surmount
the high, abrupt spines he must cross to regain the
shore. It was so dark that he could see nothing
of the castle, though it was but a few yards from
him; and he resolved therefore, the path along the
top of the cliffs being unsafe, to make his way across
the fields, and return by the high road. The consequence
was, that, what with fences and ditches, the violence
of the wind, and uncertainty about his direction,
it was so long before he felt the hard road under
his feet that with good reason he feared the house
would be closed for the night ere he reached it.
