"They all got safely ashore. Rather cut about, of course, but nothing serious. Yanni and the captain are arguing whether Our Lady of Tenos or St. Nicholas is responsible for saving our lives. The others are making a fire."
She tried to sit up; but her head was going round, and she fell back.
"Keep quiet," Michael told her. "We're in a narrow, sandy cove from which a gorge runs up into the heart of the mountains. There's a convenient cave higher up full of dried grass—a goatherd's, I suppose—and when the fire's alight the others are going to scramble across somehow to the village and send a guide for us to-morrow. There won't be time before dark to-night. Do you mind being left for a few minutes?"
She smiled her contentment, and, closing her eyes, listened to the echoes of human speech among the rocks above, and to the beating of the surf below.
Presently Yanni and Michael appeared in order to carry her up to the cave; but she found herself easily able to walk with the help of an arm, and Michael told Yanni to hurry off to the village.
Sylvia and he were soon left alone on the parapet of smoke-blackened earth in front of the cave, whence they watched the sailors toiling up the gorge in search of a track over the mountain. Then they took off nearly all their clothes and wandered about in overcoats, breaking off boughs of juniper to feed the fire for their drying.
"Nothing to eat but cheese," Michael laughed. "Our diet since we left Rakoff has always run to excess of one article. Still, cheese is more nutritious than Turkish-delight, and there's plenty of water in that theatrical cascade. The wind is dropping; though in any case we shouldn't feel it here."
Shortly before sunset the gorge echoed with liquid tinklings, and an aged goatherd appeared with his flock of brown sheep and tawny goats, which with the help of a wild-eyed boy he penned in another big cave on the opposite side. Then he joined Sylvia and Michael at their fire and gave them an unintelligible, but obviously cordial, salutation, after which he entered what was evidently his dwelling-place and came out with bottles of wine and fresh cheese. He did not seem in any way surprised by their presence in his solitude, and when darkness fell he and the boy piped ancient tunes in the firelight until they all lay down on heaps of dry grass. Sylvia remained awake for a long while in a harmony of distant waves and falling water and of sudden restless tinklings from the penned flock. In the morning the old man gave them milk and made them a stately farewell; he and his goats and his boy disappeared up the gorge for the day's pasturage in a jangling tintinnabulation that became fainter and fainter, until the last and most melodious bells tinkled at rare intervals far away in the dim heart of the mountain.
The cove and the gorge were still in deep shadow; but on the slopes above toward the east bright sunlight was hanging the trees with emeralds beneath a blue sky, and seaward the halcyon had lulled the waves for her azure nesting.
"Can't we get up into the sunlight?" Michael proposed.