I had never either felt pain or fainted before, and all this alarmed me.
Presently I began to listen to the rustle of the pebbles, as the rising tide flowed over them and fell back again, leaving them all ajar and grating against one another--strange, gurgling, jangling sound that seemed to have some meaning.

It was very cold, and a creeping moisture was oozing up from the water.

A vague wonder took hold of me as to whether I was really above the line of the tide, for, now the March tides were come, I did not know how high their flood was.

But I thought of it without any active feeling of terror or pain.

I was numbed in body and mind.