The night was now as black as a wolf's throat, but he knew every path and fence.

So he scrambled up the low cliff and began to run, following the line of stunted oaks and tamarisks which fenced it, and on the ridges--where the blown hail took him in the face--crouching and scuttling like a crab sideways, moving his legs only from the knees down.
In this way he had covered half a mile and more when his right foot plunged in a rabbit hole and he was pitched headlong into the tamarisks below.

Their boughs bent under his weight, but they were tough, and he caught at them, and just saved himself from rolling over into the black water.

He picked himself up and began to rub his twisted ankle.

And at that instant, in a lull between two gusts, his ear caught the sound of splashing, yet a sound so unlike the lapping of the driven tide that he peered over and down between the tamarisk boughs.
"Hullo there!" "Hullo!" a voice answered.