She caressed them with her eyes for the last time; then as she turned and followed Raft she forgot them. Her brave mind, that nothing could daunt but loneliness, faced the great adventure ahead not only undaunted but uplifted. The way was terrific, the chances were small, so small, so remote, that they could scarcely be called chances, and the penalty of failure was return and a winter here when the beach would be deserted by all but the gulls. The very desperation of the business made it great, and from the greatness came the uplift.
They passed the figure-head with its sphinx-like face staring over the sea, and the great skull half sanded over by the recent blow. Then they drew near the caves and the boat.
The boat had been blown over on its other side by the wind and lay with one gunnel deep buried in the sand and its keel presented to the cliffs; she glanced only once at the caves, deserted now by the birds who had no doubt picked the last fragments of the dead man.
Then they climbed the Lizard rocks and at the highest point sat down to rest for a moment.
Raft, with the bundle beside him and the harpoon held between his knees, swung his head from the great beach on his right to the broken country on his left.
He said nothing, not wishing perhaps to dishearten his companion. It was she who spoke.
“That’s the plain I told you of,” said she, “we mustn’t cross it, you can see from here some of the dangerous patches, those yellow ones, but there are others just as bad that you can’t tell till you are trapped in them. I would have gone down, only a bird flying overhead dropped a fish on the ground right in front of me and the fish disappeared.”
“We’d better get along the sea-shore rocks, seems to me,” said Raft, “the tide’s going out, all them rocks between tide marks is pretty flat.”
“Suppose the tide comes in,” said she, “and we can’t get up the cliffs?”
“Oh, we’ll have lots of time to make a good way before it comes back,” replied he, “and we’ve got to trust a bit to chance, we’ve got to strike bold. I reckon we’d better trust to instinc’.” He laughed in his beard. “The same sort of instinc’ that made that bird drop the fish to give you soundin’s of that mud hole.”