if to look back.

It seemed to her that he could read her mind and feel her terror of
being left alone. Then her mind went back over the last few days.

She had been very near death. She had drunk the last of the water in the
tin and had been too feeble to go for more. What had brought her to that
pass? It seemed to her that the rocks, the sea and the sky had slowly
sucked her vitality away from her till at last she could not eat, could
not walk, could not think. All that time her mind had never thought of
loneliness, the thing that was killing her had veiled itself by numbing
her brain and weakening her body. But near death her mind had cleared
and the great grief of desolation stood before her. Then God-sent, a
form had pushed the grief aside and a hand had taken her lonely hand and
a finger had moistened her lips. But it was the knowledge that the hand
was a real hand that gave her the first lead back to life.

Then the last three days. The feeling of extreme helplessness and
sickness and the knowledge that she was watched over and cared for and
thought for--there was no word to express what all that meant. It turned
the great rough figure to a spirit, great and tender and benign.

He was coming along back now carrying something he had picked up amongst
the rocks. It was a crab.

A great satisfactory two pound crab bound up in kelp ribbon so craftily
that it could neither bite nor escape. He put it on the sand for her to
look at before taking it off to boil.

The sun was hot and as he stood whilst she admired his prize: "Don't you
feel the sun to your head?" asked he.

"No," she replied, "I like it. I had a hat--a sou'wester but it's in a
cave away down the beach. There's a dead man there."

"A dead man?" said Raft.

"Yes. I killed him."

"Killed him?"

"It was partly accident. He was one of the sailors. He was a bad man.
The other sailor got lost and never came back and I was left alone with
this man. He nearly frightened me to death."

"Swab," said Raft.

"Then one night he crawled into my cave in the dark and I struck out
with the knife and it killed him--he's lying there now. I didn't mean to
kill him, but he frightened me."

"Swab," said Raft, two tones deeper. Then he laughed as if to himself.
"Well, that's a go," said he. He took a pull at his beard as he
contemplated this slayer of men seated on her blankets at his feet. She
glanced up and saw that he was laughing and a wan smile came around