Besides, he was most anxious to get down to the beach again, for no one could say what might take place there before morning.
As soon, therefore, as he heard the door close, he jumped out of bed, and when, peeping through the blinds, he saw the carriage drive off with its four occupants, he at once began to dress.

He felt bruised and sore from the blows he had received, and a red wheal round his chest, beneath the arms, showed where the rope had almost cut into the flesh.
However, he soon dressed himself, and descended the stairs, went into the kitchen, and told the astonished girl that he was going out; then, having made a hasty meal of bread and cold meat, he put on his oilskins again, and started for the shore.
He did not, however, wait long.

So heavy was the sea, now, that nothing whatever could be done should any vessel drive ashore, and, as for the fisher boats, the sailors shook their heads as they spoke of them.
"They were farther away to the west, so the chaps as got ashore tells us.

They may have got in, somewhere, before it got to the worst.

If not, it must have gone hard with them." Finding that there was nothing to be done, and that he was much more stiff and bruised than he had believed, Jim made his way back again, and turned into bed; where he soon fell asleep, and did not wake until the following morning.
One of the grooms had come down from the Hall, at six o'clock, to inquire how he was, and the message given by the girl, that he had been out, but that he had come back and was now sound asleep, satisfied Mrs.
Walsham, and enabled her to devote her undivided attention to her charge, who needed her care more than her son.