The sea was dead calm, and I had to
wade a long way out before I got deep
enough for a plunge, after which I began
to swim. The water was not too cold,
there was not even a languid heave on its
surface, and I struck out, enjoying the free
motion, until I began to feel tired. I am a
bad swimmer, and had never knowingly
gone out of my depth. Dropping my feet
I found myself up to the neck, and I then
suddenly perceived that I was closely
encircled by a dense mist, and was utterly at
a loss to know which way the shore lay.
The tide, I knew, was rising fast. I could
not trust myself to swim, lest I should be
swimming out to sea, instead of towards the
land. I made a step or two in one direction,
then in another, but always seemed to be
getting deeper. Then, like a sudden blow,
came upon me the full sense of my situation.
Here I was, opposite my own door, where
my wife and little children were waiting for
me, within perhaps two hundred yards of
dry land, dangerously deep in the water,
and helplessly unable to find my way out.

The peril was imminent. I must have
been, I now think, on the top of a
low bank of sand, and, though shallow
water and safety must have been within
twenty yards of me, I could not, to save
my life, tell which way to turn. It
flashed on me that I should be drowned:
drowned quietly and surely, within
gunshot of my home; and that the flowing
tide, there being no current and no
wind, would float my dead body up, and
leave it on the sands before my door. The
danger was terrible: yet there was no
hurry. The tide was rising fast, but I
could not be drowned for at least ten
minutes, and I had that time before me to
do what I could with. It would never do
to die like this, without an effort to save
my life, but it was utterly impossible to say
in what direction that effort should be made.
The fog seemed to settle down closer and
closer around me, and the water was rising
steadily, but very slowly, the surface of
the sea being like oil.

Something had to be done, and quickly.
I stood quite still, and looked to see if there
were any ripple of current against my neck
would show the inflow of the tide.
There was none. I held up my wet arm
to feel for a wind. There was not a breath.
I strained my ears to hear any noise—the
barking of a dog, voices on the land, the
crowing of cocks, anything that would
answer the, to me, tremendous question,
Where is the shore?

Not a sound. The stillness was awful
and horrible. To shout for help was the
last resort; but I would not spend my
strength in that, until I had tried everything
else; and I knew, besides, that being
a Sunday morning, and the sands deserted,
there would be neither boat nor boatman
on the shore. I remembered, too, that
voices in a fog almost always seem to
change their direction, and that they mislead
those who come in search. Steadily and
without noise the tide rose up, until the
water reached my chin. I was perfectly
collected, and endeavoured to recal all I
had read of similar emergencies, tried back
in my memory to find, if I could, some
chance for life that some one else in deadly
peril had risked and won. Holding my
breath, and laying my ear close to the
water, I strained every nerve of hearing in
vain; but where the one sense on which I
was depending failed me, another came to
my rescue. Between the dense mist and
the water, there seemed to be about an inch
of interval, and through this chink, as it
were, I saw the dusky base of a stone beacon
which I knew stood out in the sea, nearly
opposite my house. Here was a chance,
and with an instant thrill of joy at having
gained at last some idea of the direction
in which an effort for life might be made,
I struck out and swam to the beacon, where
I laid hold of an iron bar which served to
stay it to the rock below.

When the momentary exultation was
over, I found I was not much better off
than before. I had the beacon to hold to, and
could even climb to the top, which was still
a foot above the surface of the sea; but I
knew it would be covered deep at half tide.
Still here was more time gained; and the
fear of death, or I should rather say, the
settled assurance without fear, passed from
me. Climbing to the top of the beacon, I
tried if I could look out over the mist, but
it was thicker than ever. Now came a
curious illustration of the extraordinary
closeness together of what we are
accustomed to consider as our most opposed
mental and moral emotions. I had just been
in deadly peril of my life, and what I had
gained was, perhaps, but a short respite. The
danger was less imminent, still it was not
past. I had been as near my death as
ever I shall be until the end does come;
yet I was so suddenly struck with the
absurdity of my appearance—a naked man
perched like a crane on a stone beacon in
a white fog—that I burst into a roar of
laughter.