Im Dunkel der Nacht — Argosy, Vol. 1

# Im Dunkel der Nacht

This serialized novel by Mrs. Henry Wood, translated from English and serialized in Argosy magazine, opens with melodramatic urgency on a storm-darkened English clifftop. Protagonist Lionel Dering, preoccupied with his hopeless love for Edith West, witnesses a stranger wandering unknowingly toward a precipice during a violent tempest. Despite warnings from a coastguard named Bunce, Dering attempts a perilous descent via the "Smugglers' Staircase"—a treacherous natural stone formation carved into the cliffs—to rescue the man. Battered by waves and rocks, Dering locates the stranger's unconscious body on a rock ledge half-submerged by rising tidal waters. Finding him barely alive with a head wound, Dering tends him with brandy from a flask while awaiting rescue and the receding tide, unable to move the injured man to safety before daybreak.