Michael's Crag by Grant Allen — Read

The Trevennacks dined in their lodgings at Gunwalloe at half-past seven. But in the rough open-air life of summer visitors on the Cornish coast, meals as a rule are very movable feasts; and Michael Trevennack wasn't particularly alarmed when he reached home that evening to find Cleer hadn't returned before him. They had missed one another, somehow, among the tangled paths that led down the gully; an easy enough thing to do between those big boulders and bramble-bushes; and it was a quarter to eight before Trevennack began to feel alarmed at Cleer's prolonged absence. By that time, however, he grew thoroughly frightened; and, reproaching himself bitterly for having let his daughter stray out of his sight in the first place, he hurried back, with his wife, at the top of his speed along the cliff path to the Penmorgan headland.

It's half an hour's walk from Gunwalloe to Michael's Crag; and by the time Trevennack reached the mouth of the gully the sands were almost covered; so for the first time in fifteen years he was forced to take the path right under the cliff to the now comparatively distant island, round whose base a whole waste of angry sea surged sullenly. On the way they met a few workmen who, in answer to their inquiries, could give them no news, but who turned back to aid in the search for the missing young lady. When they got opposite Michael's Crag, a wide belt of black water, all encumbered with broken masses of sharp rock, some above and some below the surface, now separated them by fifty yards or more from the island. It was growing dark fast, for these were the closing days of August twilight; and dense fog had drifted in, half obliterating everything. They could barely descry the dim outline of the pyramidal rock in its lower half; its upper part was wholly shrouded in thick mist and drizzle.