the cliffs will give us a lead, it'll be slow
going but we'll do it all right, it's not more than six miles or so to
the break from the point there."

"When can we start?"

Raft listened to the water below, it was breaking now against the near
rocks but not yet against the cliff base.

"In another three hours or maybe a bit more," said he.

An hour later, as though the Fog spirit had been listening and watching,
and as though it despaired of its attack on the heart of the prisoners,
the smother began to thin; by the time the tide reluctantly began to
free them it had broken up and patches of the blessed blue sky shewed
overhead.

By the time they reached the point and had a view of the great cliff
break-down that would give them release it was fine weather, with a
gently heaving sea breaking in beneath a sky of summer.

It was as though their troubles were ended. At noon they reached the
great break-down and a new form of country.

Stretching inland almost to the foothills lay a broad valley, boulder
strewn, and looking like the bed of some vanished river. Before them to
the west the ground rose from the valley, gently, unbroken, desolate,
like nothing so much as the desolate country that borders the Riff coast
of Morocco. But it was ease itself compared to the tumble of rocks
around and beyond the Lizard Point.

Down the middle of the valley came a little wimpling rivulet like the
remains of the river that had once been. They drank from it and rested
and had some food, then they started with light hearts, taking the easy
ascent to the high ground, treading a moss dark and springy like the
moss that covers the old lava beds of Iceland.

"Look!" said the girl.

They had reached the highest point and before them, away to the west,
stretched the same rolling dark-smooth country, making low cliffs at the
sea edge and then, as if weary of little things, springing gigantic and
bold towards the sky.

"It's over there the bay would be," said Raft. "Ponting said it was a
black brute of a bay between two cliffs rising higher than a ship's top
masts. Well, there's our chance before us--if you call it a chance. It's
a long way, taking it how you will."

Chance! Despite her optimism and belief in being led, as she stood now
with the wind blowing in her face it seemed to her that she stood
before absolute hopelessness.

Nothing, not even the sea corridor, had balked her like that terrible
distance, calm, sunlit, yet