“Done? Why, gone to ground like a badger,” she answered, pointing to the cleft in the rent rock-bed. “If he’s half the size Mr. Carver makes out, we could sit in there and make faces at him. He wouldn’t have a chance to reach us.”
“What a very practical imagination you have,” I declared admiringly, as I peered over the bulwarks into the fissure. It sloped gently down from our stern into the darkness, in width about five feet—infinitely too small a space for the great brute to pass, as I could see. “That makes me feel much more comfortable. Now if by any chance he does appear, I shall know you have a refuge at hand. But we hope to kill him,” I added reassuringly.
“Kill the only Dinosaur extant!” she expostulated, “I’m convinced Monsieur Lessaution will never allow it.”
“I think after his experience of yesterday he is resigned to the sacrifice. He’ll enjoy cutting him up dead quite as much as admiring him from a distance living. Besides, according to him your sanctuary may at any moment fail you. The water, he says, may rise again as suddenly as it has disappeared.”
“My goodness! that would be humiliating, wouldn’t it? Fancy if we were safely ensconced in there, and the waters that are under the earth vomited us out into his jaws. What an ignoble end to a yachting cruise.”
“I’m afraid in any case you’ll have a rough time of it before we can get away,” said I, a little sadly. “We are going to do our best to send word to the Falklands, but it is bound to be a long business. I hope you won’t mind—much.”
She looked at me with a smile that I can only describe as distracting. “My dear Lord Heatherslie,” she said quite earnestly, “I’m looking forward to it as one of the most delightful periods of my life. I have all I want to make me happy. If it wasn’t for mother I should be quite prepared to stay here months.”
“I shouldn’t,” said I, quite gruffly, as the sound of the breakfast gong turned us toward the companion. “But then, you see, I haven’t all I want to make me happy,” and my voice shook the tiniest bit as I said it.
She half stopped at the head of the stairs, and looked at me half inquiringly. She parted her lips as if she was going to speak, but thought better of it, and ran lightly down into the cabin, where she took her seat without a word, and it struck me that she was more silent than usual during breakfast. As for me, I had no strength to waste on mere conversation, my time being fully occupied in assimilating my victuals, and in fighting down the black temper which had me in its grip.
For, truth to tell, my battle with my jealous self was wearing me sadly. I still went on loving Gwen for all I was worth, and the hopeless weeks that stretched before me wherein I must be in her constant company loomed dark and desperate. Every time she spoke to me was a pang; her very innocent friendliness an agony. No doubt physical weakness and the stress of the last few days had something to do with it, but I could have ended my existence at that time with much satisfaction to myself, and I think it was only a sneaking sense of the utter cowardliness of the thing that stayed me. You can understand that I did not linger over breakfast. I took my cigar on deck at the earliest opportunity, and wrestled there alone with the devils of despair that had me in their grip, till I felt calmer and fit again for the toils of the coming day.