“Home—sister—Madelaine,” he moaned, “gone, gone for ever! Better that I had died; better that I was dead!”
But the horror was no longer there, and in a short time he roused up from his prostrate condition half wild and faint with hunger.
After a few minutes’ search he found a couple of his cigars lying where he had thrown them on the sand, and lighting one, he tried to dull the agony of famine by smoking hard.
The effect was little, and he rose from where he was seated and began to feel about the shelves of the rock for limpets, a few of which he scraped from their conical shells and ate with disgust; but they did something towards alleviating his hunger, and seemed to drive away the strange, half-delirious feeling which came over him from time to time, making him look wildly round and wonder whether this was all some dreadful dream.
About mid-day he heard voices and the beating of oars, when, wading towards the opening, he stood listening, and was not long in convincing himself that the party was in search of him, while a word or two that he heard spoken made him think that the party must have picked up the body of the drowned sailor.
The voices and the sound of the oars died away, and in the midst of the deep silence he crept nearer and peered out to be aware that a couple of boats were passing about a quarter of a mile out, while from their hailing some one, it seemed that a third boat, invisible to the fugitive, was coming along nearer in.
He crept back into the semi-darkness and listened with his ear close to the water till, after a time, as he began to conclude that this last boat must have gone back, and he wondered again and again whether the drifting body had been found, he heard voices once more, every word coming now with marvellous clearness.
“No, sir, only a bit of a crevice.”
“Does it go far in?”
“Far in, Mr Leslie, sir? Oh, no. Should waste time by going up there. You can see right up to the mouth, and there’s nothing.”