Now and then something moved with a small rustling.

It might have been a lizard, a crab, or even a bat.

But Chris thought of snakes and stiffened to rigidity, scarcely daring to breathe.

The roar of the sea sounded remote and far, yet insistent also as though it held a threat.

And, above all, thick and hard and agitatingly distinct, arose the throbbing of her frightened heart.
All the horrors she had ever heard or dreamt of passed through her brain as she waited there, yet with a certain desperate courage she kept herself from panic.