"My poor Helier!... They had muffled my head in a cloak so that I could neither hear nor see. I had just gone outside—"
"Your father and Martin were in a great state about you, but I could not wait to explain. Anything I could have said would only have added to their anxiety, and that was not as great as my own, for I had my own fears of what had happened and they knew nothing."
"Yes, yes. You could have done no other," and she fell silent for a time, refitting her thoughts of Helier, no doubt.
So far, the most striking things in our rock parlour had been the silence and the darkness, but before long we had noise and to spare.
First, a low harsh growling from the tunnel by which we had entered, and that was the returning tide churning among the shingle and boulders in the rock channels outside. Then it grew into a roar which rose and fell as the long western waves plunged into the Boutiques, and swelled and foamed along its echoing sides, and then sank back with a long weltering sob, and rose again higher than before, and knew no rest. We could hear it all so clearly that none could doubt the existence of passages between the two caves.
We sat and listened to it, and ate at times, but could not talk much for the uproar. But for me it was enough to sit with Carette inside my arm and close against my heart, and there was something in that long swelling roar and sighing sob which, after a while, set weights on the eyelids and the senses and disposed one to sleep. For a time we counted the coming of the larger wave, and then the countings grew confused and we fell asleep.
As a matter of fact we lost all count of time in that dark place. When we woke we ate again by lantern light, and though either one of us alone must have fallen into melancholy as black as the place, being together, and having that within us which made for glad hearts, we were very well content, though still hoping soon to be out again in the free air and sunshine.
THE WATER CAVE. "The roof and walls were studded with anemones of every size and colour."