Page 527 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

the gulfs on either side of him. It seemed to him, also, that
the gullet of weed-clad rock through which he was crawl-
ing doubled upon itself, and led only into the bowels of the
mountain. Gnawed by hunger, and conscious that in a few
hours at most the rising tide would fill the subterranean
passage and cut off his retreat, he pushed desperately on-
wards. He had descended some ninety feet, and had lost, in
the devious windings of his downward path, all but the re-
flection of the light from the gallery, when he was rewarded
by a glimpse of sunshine striking upwards. He parted two
enormous masses of seaweed, whose bubble-headed fronds
hung curtainwise across his path, and found himself in the
very middle of the narrow cleft of rock through which the
sea was driven to the Blow-hole.
At an immense distance above him was the arch of cliff.
Beyond that arch appeared a segment of the ragged edge of
the circular opening, down which he had fallen. He looked
in vain for the funnel-mouth whose friendly shelter had re-
ceived him. It was now indistinguishable. At his feet was a
long rift in the solid rock, so narrow that he could almost
have leapt across it. This rift was the channel of a swift black
current which ran from the sea for fifty yards under an arch
eight feet high, until it broke upon the jagged rocks that
lay blistering in the sunshine at the bottom of the circu-
lar opening in the upper cliff. A shudder shook the limbs
of the adventurous convict. He comprehended that at high
tide the place where he stood was under water, and that the
narrow cavern became a subaqueous pipe of solid rock forty
feet long, through which were spouted the league-long roll-

For the Term of His Natural Life