The Moonstone

The sunlight poured its unclouded beauty on every object that I could

see. The exquisite freshness of the air made the mere act of living and

breathing a luxury. Even the lonely little bay welcomed the morning

with a show of cheerfulness; and the bared wet surface of the quicksand

itself, glittering with a golden brightness, hid the horror of its false

brown face under a passing smile. It was the finest day I had seen since

my return to England.

The turn of the tide came, before my cigar was finished. I saw the

preliminary heaving of the Sand, and then the awful shiver that crept

over its surface--as if some spirit of terror lived and moved and

shuddered in the fathomless deeps beneath. I threw away my cigar, and

went back again to the rocks.

My directions in the memorandum instructed me to feel along the line

traced by the stick, beginning with the end which was nearest to the

beacon.

I advanced, in this manner, more than half way along the stick, without

encountering anything but the edges of the rocks. An inch or two further

on, however, my patience was rewarded. In a narrow little fissure, just

within reach of my forefinger, I felt the chain. Attempting, next,

to follow it, by touch, in the direction of the quicksand, I found my

progress stopped by a thick growth of seaweed--which had fastened itself

into the fissure, no doubt, in the time that had elapsed since Rosanna

Spearman had chosen her hiding-place.

It was equally impossible to pull up the seaweed, or to force my hand

through it. After marking the spot indicated by the end of the stick

which was placed nearest to the quicksand, I determined to pursue

the search for the chain on a plan of my own. My idea was to "sound"

immediately under the rocks, on the chance of recovering the lost trace

of the chain at the point at which it entered the sand. I took up the

stick, and knelt down on the brink of the South Spit.

In this position, my face was within a few feet of the surface of the

quicksand. The sight of it so near me, still disturbed at intervals by

its hideous shivering fit, shook my nerves for the moment. A horrible

fancy that the dead woman might appear on the scene of her suicide, to

assist my search--an unutterable dread of seeing her rise through the

heaving surface of the sand, and point to the place--forced itself into

my mind, and turned me cold in the warm sunlight. I own I closed my eyes

at the moment when the point of the stick first entered the quicksand.

The instant afterwards, before the stick could have been submerged more

than a few inches, I was free from the hold of my own superstitious

terror, and was throbbing with excitement from head to foot. Sounding

blindfold, at my first attempt--at that first attempt I had sounded

right! The stick struck the chain.