'Yes, dear,' I said, looking in the same direction, 'you must be going; see how the waves are surrounding the Point. You must run, Winnie--you must run, and leave me.'
'Yes,' said she, still gazing across to the Point, 'as you say, I must run, but not yet, dear; plenty of time yet,' and she smiled to herself as she used to do in the old days, when as a child she had made up her mind to do something.
Then without another word she took her shawl from her shoulders, and pulled it out to see its length. And soon I felt her fingers stealing my penknife from my waistcoat-pocket, and saw her deftly cut up the shawl, strip after strip, and weave it and knot it into a rope, and tie the rope around her waist, and then she stooped to tie it around me.
It was when I felt her warm breath about my neck as she stooped over me to tie that rope, that love was really revealed to me; it was then, and not till then, that all my previous love for Winifred seemed as the flicker of a rushlight to Sálamán's cloak of fire; and a feeling of bliss unutterable came upon me, and the night air seemed full of music, and the sky above seemed opening, as she whispered, 'Henry, Henry, Henry, in a few minutes you will be mine.' But the very confidence with which she spoke these simple words startled me as from a dream. 'Suppose,' I thought, 'suppose my last drop of bliss with Winnie were being tasted now!' In a moment I felt like a coward. But then there came a loud crash and a thunder from behind the landslip.
'The settlement!' I cried. 'The coming in of the tide has made the landslip settle!'
When I sat with closed eyes examining my fiery photograph, I had calculated the 'settlement' at the return of the tide as being among the chances of escape. But feeling myself to be engaged in a duel with Circumstance (more cruel than the fiends), I believed that the settlement would come too late for us, or even if it did not come too late, it might not hide away the spectacle. The settlement had come; what had it done for us? This I must know at once.
'Untie the rope,' I said; 'quick, untie the rope, there is a settlement of the landslip.'
'But what has the settlement to do with us?' said Winnie.
'It _has_ to do with us, dear; untie the rope. It has much to do with us, Winnie,' I said; for now the determination to save her life came on me stronger than ever.