They must have laid me here to be fetched off by the boat.

Suppose the tide had risen while I was asleep!" But the joyous feeling went off as he stared about him.

It had been dark enough in a dense fog, but it did not feel dark and cold now, as if there was a dense fog.

Everything seemed dry, and though he listened attentively, he could not hear the washing of the waves among the rocks, nor smell the cool, moist, sea-weedy odour of the coast.

Instead of that a most unmistakable smell of brandy came into his nostrils.
And yet he seemed to be standing on that ledge close down to the water, for as he stooped down now he could trace with his hand one of the huge, curled-up shell-fish turned to the stone in which it was embedded, while, as he felt about, there was another and another larger still.
He listened again.
No; he was not on the seashore.