The sea was growing calmer. But there was still a heavy swell, which made his departure, for the present at least, impossible. The day, too, was far advanced. For the sloop with its burden to get to Guernsey before midnight, it was necessary to start in the morning.
Although pressed by hunger, Gilliatt began by stripping himself, the only means of getting warmth. His clothing was saturated by the storm, but the rain had washed out the sea-water, which rendered it possible to dry them.
He kept nothing on but his trousers, which he turned up nearly to the knees.
His overcoat, jacket, overalls, and sheepskin he spread out and fixed with large round stones here and there.
Then he thought of eating.
He had recourse to his knife, which he was careful to sharpen, and to keep always in good condition; and he detached from the rock a few limpets, similar in kind to the clonisses of the Mediterranean. It is well known that these are eaten raw; but after so many labors, so various and so rude, the pittance was meagre. His biscuit was gone; but of water he had now abundance.
He took advantage of the receding tide to wander among the rocks in search of crayfish.
He wandered, not in the gorge of the rocks, but outside among the smaller breakers. It was there that the Durande, ten weeks previously, had struck upon the sunken reef.
For the search that Gilliatt was prosecuting, this part was more favorable than the interior. At low water the crabs are accustomed to crawl out into the air. They seem to like to warm themselves in the sun, where they swarm sometimes to the disgust of the loiterers, who recognize in these creatures, with their awkward sidelong gait, climbing clumsily from crack to crack the lower stages of the rocks like the steps of a staircase, a sort of sea vermin.
For two months Gilliatt had lived upon these vermin of the sea.