The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight of
the place where she had perished.
With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see things
about me, as things really were. Looking towards the sand-hills, I saw
the men-servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland,
all running down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm,
calling out to know if the girl had been found. In the fewest words, the
Sergeant showed them the evidence of the footmarks, and told them that
a fatal accident must have happened to her. He then picked out the
fisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about again
towards the sea: "Tell me," he said. "Could a boat have taken her off,
in such weather as this, from those rocks where her footmarks stop?"
The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, and
to the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands on
either side of us.
"No boat that ever was built," he answered, "could have got to her
through THAT."
Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the foot-marks on the sand,
which the rain was now fast blurring out.
"There," he said, "is the evidence that she can't have left this place
by land. And here," he went on, looking at the fisherman, "is the
evidence that she can't have got away by sea." He stopped, and
considered for a minute. "She was seen running towards this place, half
an hour before I got here from the house," he said to Yolland. "Some
time has passed since then. Call it, altogether, an hour ago. How high
would the water be, at that time, on this side of the rocks?" He pointed
to the south side--otherwise, the side which was not filled up by the
quicksand.
"As the tide makes to-day," said the fisherman, "there wouldn't have
been water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hour
since."
Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.
"How much on this side?" he asked.
"Less still," answered Yolland. "The Shivering Sand would have been just
awash, and no more."
The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have happened
on the side of the quicksand. My tongue was loosened at that. "No
accident!" I told him. "When she came to this place, she came weary of
her life, to end it here."
He started back from me. "How do you know?" he asked. The rest of them
crowded round. The Sergeant recovered himself instantly. He put them
back from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had shaken
me; he said, "Let him alone a little." Then he turned to Yolland, and
asked, "Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?"
And Yolland answered, "None. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps for
ever." Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addressed
himself to me.