And, as he paused, the swirl of a great wave caught him in the darkness like the blow of a concrete thing, nearly flinging him backwards.  He staggered, for the first time stricken with fear, and then in the howling uproar of that dreadful place there came to him like a searchlight wheeling inwards the thought of the girl.  The water receded from him, leaving him drenched, almost dazed, but a voice within—­an urgent, insistent voice—­clamoured that his safety was at stake, his life a matter of mere moments if he lingered.  This was the Death Current of which Rufus had warned him only that afternoon.  Had not the bell-buoy been tolling to deaf ears for some time past?  The Death Current that came like a tidal wave!  And nothing could live in it.  The girl—­surely the girl had been washed off her ledge and overwhelmed in the flood before it had reached him.  Possibly Rufus would manage to save her, for that it was Rufus who had so savagely sprung upon him he had no doubt; but he himself was powerless.  If he saved his own life it would be by a miracle.  Had not the fellow warned him that retreat by way of the cliff-path would be cut off in thirty seconds when the tide raced up like that?  And if he failed to reach that, only the quicksand was left—­the quicksand that dragged a man down quicker than hell!

He set his teeth and turned his face to the cliff.  A light was shining half-way up it—­that must come from the window of Rufus’s cottage.  He took it as a beacon, and began to stumble through the howling darkness towards it.  He knew the cliff-path.  He had come down it only that night to make sure that there was no one spying upon them.  The cottage had been shut and dark then, the little garden empty.  He had concluded that Rufus had gone early to rest after a long day with the nets, and had passed on securely to wait for Columbine on the edge of their magic pool.  But what he did not know was exactly where the cliff-path ran out on to the beach.  The opening was close to the Caves and sheltered by rocks.  Could he find it in this infernal darkness?  Could he ever make his way to it in time?  With the waves crashing behind him he struggled desperately towards the blackness of the cliffs.

The rocks under his feet were wet and slippery.  He fought his way over them, feeling as if a hundred demons were in league to hold him back.  The swirl of the incoming tide sounded in his ears like a monstrous chant of death.  Again and again he slipped and fell, and yet again he dragged himself up, grimly determined to fight the desperate battle to the last gasp.  The thought of Columbine had gone wholly from him, even as the thought of his lost treasure.  Only the elemental desire of life gripped him, vital and urgent, forcing him to the greatest physical effort he had ever made.  He went like a goaded animal, savage, stubborn, fiercely surmounting every obstacle, driven not so much by fear as by a furious determination to frustrate the fate that menaced him.