The Secret in the Hill by Bernard Capes — Read

Confession, discussion, incredulity, conviction, with all their concomitants of amazement, awe, emotion, were long over; long put aside in reservation was the unsolvable problem of Rampick's part in the dark mystery of the hill; long had our last exhausted consideration of these questions lapsed into something like a silence of despair, as we drifted, with gentle lap and wallow, over those immeasurable heart-breaking wastes.

At least with Harry and me, I think, hope had attenuated almost to the vanishing point. Brain-sodden, benumbed, half lifeless, grown near unconscious of time or place, the instinct to hold on, the power to keep at bay the last fatal drowsiness alone remained to us in ever-diminishing degree. We did not know, in the confusion of our senses, whether we were drawing inshore or to sea; we did not know whether we were rocking, an idle log, virtually unprogressive, or slipped into one of the coast currents, and speeding silent on an interminable journey. We could not tell the sick drawl of the hours, for our watches had, of course, stopped. But we dreaded horribly the time when dusk should fall, if it should find us derelicts still. And so it found us, drooping down and closing in; and then Providence seemed hidden, and we despaired.