A little later and I should have been helpless, as I found when I tried to get into the boat. The cold was terrible, and it had hold of my limbs in spite of the swimming. It was hard work climbing over the bows, as I must needs do unless I wanted to capsize the light craft as I had overset a fisher's canoe more than once, by boarding her over the side, as we sported in the Glastonbury meres in high summer; but I managed it, and was all the better for the struggle, which set the blood coursing in my veins again. Then I got out the oars and began to pull away from the ship, with no care for direction so long as I could get away from her.
The foe had no boat, for they were all clustered in the ship or close to her on the rock, and there was a deal of noise going on among them. When I was fairly out of their way, and I could no longer make out their forms, I began to plan where I had best go, and at first I thought of a little beach that I had seen on the far side of the cove, thinking that I could get up what seemed a gorge to the cliff's top, and so hide inland somewhere. But when I could see right into the gorge, I found that it was steep and higher than I thought. My foes would be able to meet me by the time I was at the top.
There was no other place that I could see, for none could climb from the foot of the cliffs elsewhere, since if he reached the rocks he would have to stay where he leapt to them. So as there was no help for it, I headed for the open sea. No doubt, I thought, I should find some landing place along the coast before I had gone far, and meanwhile I was getting a fair start of the enemy, who would have to follow the windings of the cliffs if they cared to come after me.
I pulled therefore for the eastern end of the cove, opposite to the place where the ship lay, and so rounded the point and was out in the open and tossing on the waves in a way that tried my rowing sorely, for I am but a fresh-water boatman. Lucky it was for me that there was little sea on, or I should have fared badly. Then I pulled eastward, and against the tide also, but that was a thing that I did not know.
The boat was wonderfully light and swift, and far less trouble to send along than any other I had seen. There are no better shipwrights than the Norsemen, and we Saxons have forgotten the craft.
The terrible numbness passed off as I worked, but now the wind grew cold, and the clouds were working up from the southwest quickly, with wind overhead that was not felt here yet. I knew that I must make some haven soon, or it was likely that I should be frozen on the sea, but the great cliffs were like walls, and at their feet was a fringe of angry foam everywhere. I could see no hope as yet. Far away to the east of me a great headland seemed to bar my way, but I did not think that I should ever reach it. And all the while I looked to see the black forms of men on the cliffs in the moonlight, but they did not come. That was good at least.
Then at last my heart leapt, for I saw, as a turn of the cliffs opened out to me, another white beach with a cleft of the rocks running up from it, and I thought it best to take the chance it gave me, for I feared the blinding snow that would be here soon, and I felt that the sea was rising. If my foes were after me they would have been seen before now, as they came to the edge of the cliffs to spy me out, and anyway I dreaded them less than the growing cold. Moreover, I thought that Evan would hardly get many men to follow him on a chase of what he had told them was a madman, and a dangerous one at that. He had his goods to see to also.
So I ran the boat into the black mouth of the gorge, and beached her well by good chance. I had little time to lose, but I tied her painter to a rock at the highest fringe of tide wrack, in hopes that she might be safe. It was so dark here that I did not think that Evan would see her from above. And then I began to climb up the rugged path that led out of the gorge to the hilltops.
There were bones everywhere in it. Bones and skulls of droves of cattle on all the strand above the tide mark for many score yards. Their ribs stuck out from the snow everywhere, and the sightless eye sockets grinned at me as I stumbled over them. But I had no time to wonder how they came there, for I must get to the summit before Evan and his men reached it by their way along the cliff. I ate handfuls of the snow and quenched my thirst that was growing on me again, and my strength began to come back to me as I hurried upward. I was a better man when at last I reached the top of the gorge than when I came ashore.