follow her.

But he moved to and fro like a sentinel, while she landed in trepidation
and secured the boat to the branches of a white coral rock.

She found the place much larger than it looked from Telegraph Point. It
was an archipelago of coral reef incrusted here and there with shells.
She could not see all over it, where she was, so she made for what seemed
the highest part, a bleak, sea-weedy mound, with some sandy hillocks
about it. She went up to this, and looked eagerly all round.

Not a soul.

She called as loud as her sinking heart would let her.

Not a sound.

She felt very sick, and sat down upon the mound.

When she had yielded awhile to the weakness of her sex, she got up and
was her father's daughter again. She set to work to examine every foot of
the reef.

It was no easy task. The rocks were rugged and sharp in places, slippery
in others; often she had to go about, and once she fell and hurt her
pretty hands and made them bleed; she never looked at them, nor heeded,
but got up and sighed at the interruption; then patiently persisted. It
took her two hours to examine thus, in detail, one half the island. But
at last she discovered something. She saw at the eastern side of the reef
a wooden figure of a woman, and, making her way to it, found the
figurehead and a piece of the bow of the ship, with a sail on it, and a
yard on that. This fragment was wedged into an angle of the reef, and the
seaward edge of it shattered in a way that struck terror to Helen, for it
showed her how omnipotent the sea had been. On the reef itself she found
a cask with its head stove in, also a little keg and two wooden chests or
cases. But what was all this to her?

She sat down again, for her knees failed her. Presently there was a sort
of moan near her, and a seal splashed into the water and dived out of her
sight. She put her hands on her heart, and bowed her head down, utterly
desolate. She sat thus for a long time indeed, until she was interrupted
by a most unexpected visitor. Something came sniffing up to her and put a
cold nose to her hand. She started violently, and both her hands were in
the air in a moment.

It was a dog, a pointer. He whimpered and tried to gambol, but could not
manage it; he was too weak. However, he contrived to let her see, with
the wagging of his tail and a certain contemporaneous twist of his
emaciated body, that she was welcome. But, having performed this
ceremony, he trotted feebly