He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his pocket.
It was winter—it was night. It would be necessary to walk several leagues before a human habitation could be reached.
He did not know where he was.
He knew nothing, unless it was that those who had come with him to the brink of the sea had gone away without him.
He felt himself put outside the pale of life.
He felt that man failed him.
He was ten years old.
The child was in a desert, between depths where he saw the night rising and depths where he heard the waves murmur.
He stretched his little thin arms and yawned.
Then suddenly, as one who makes up his mind, bold, and throwing off his numbness—with the agility of a squirrel, or perhaps of an acrobat—he turned his back on the creek, and set himself to climb up the cliff. He escaladed the path, left it, returned to it, quick and venturous. He was hurrying landward, just as though he had a destination marked out; nevertheless he was going nowhere.