Suppose he should be drowned! What that awful pile would be like in bad weather she dared not think.
She prayed wildly for his life,—"Oh God, spare him to me! He is all I have! Spare him! Have pity on us both! Spare him! Spare him!"—over and over again the same ultimate cry, for her mind was closed to every other thought but this, that the man she loved more than anything on earth was out there in peril of his life.
She stayed there, drenched by the rain and flailed by the wind, till it began to grow dark, and then she crept wearily home like a broken bird.
Grim fear gripped her heart like an icy hand, but she would not despair entirely. He was so strong and capable. He might have tried and found it impossible to get back. He might come in at any minute.
If he were here the first thing he would have told her was to change into dry clothes. She changed, and made up the fire and put on the kettle. He would be cold and hungry when he came. She must be ready for him.
Out there on the wreckage, Wulf had been so hard at work that he noticed no sign of change in the weather, till the clammy mist swept over him and blotted out everything but the box he was delving into.
The winter storms had wrought great changes in the pile. It seemed thicker and higher and more chaotic than ever, bristling with new stuff which he would have liked to investigate, in case it should contain anything that would add to Avice's comfort.
But first, to find some decent flour, and, as it happened, there seemed fewer barrels about than usual, and most of them had suffered in their rough transit. The search for a good one took time. Such as he found were gaping and he did not trouble to open them. However, he discovered one at last, opened it to make sure of the goodness of its heart and then turned to seek tobacco.
It was then that the fog swept down on him and chained him to three square feet or so of precarious foothold. Trespass beyond that limit might mean a broken limb or neck, for the surface of the pile was seamed with ragged rifts and chasms, in which the tide whuffled and growled like a wild beast anticipating food.
So he rooted away in the chest he had just smashed open, lighted on a supply of tobacco to his great satisfaction, and then sat down where he was, to wait till the fog cleared. But this, he perceived, was not one of their usual clinging fogs which enveloped one like a pall of cotton-wool. It drove on a rising wind and sped past him in dense whirling coils that made his head spin. He thought briefly of mighty spirits of the air trailing ghostly garments in rapid flight. Down below him, in the black rifts and along the sides of the pile, the water was yapping savagely, as if the wild beast would wait no longer.