“Me—oh, no, not more than a bit stiff in the arm.” He stretched his left arm out. Then he looked at the bundle.
“You don’t want nothing to eat just yet?” asked he.
“Not till you come back,” she answered. “I’ll watch you from here.”
He scrambled down, picked up the harpoon which he had left on the rocks and then looked up and nodded to her.
“I’ll keep in sight,” said he. Then he started.
She watched his great figure as it went, harpoon in hand, growing smaller and smaller, till, now, she could have covered it with her thumb nail. As the distance increased it seemed to go slower and the great black cliffs to grow higher.
At a dizzy height above her cormorants had their nests, they seemed angry about something as they clanged and flew, shooting out into the sky and wheeling back again in an aimless manner. Before her the grey sea crawled, coming, now, steadily shoreward.
The tide seemed coming in faster than usual. She knew that this could not be so and that Raft was too wise to allow himself to be cut off, all the same a smouldering anxiety fed on her heart as she watched the tiny figure now approaching the out-jutting shoulder of cliff. Then it disappeared.
He had promised to keep in sight.
Evidently that was impossible if he wanted to get a view of what lay beyond.