idden among the bushes, and started.

It was not a heavy load, fortunately. Had it been heavy she would have
dropped it, for, once moving, she had to run. The idea that she was
deserting people who did not want to be deserted pursued her; now and
again she stopped and turned for a moment--nothing; the Lizard rocks lay
just the same and the beach and the forsaken boat, just the same, and
the jeering gulls; yet, when she turned again to go on she had to run.

Near the great skull her right bootlace, getting loose, nearly tripped
her. She sat down and tied it and then went on, walking now, but
swiftly, till, nearing the river and in full sight of her new
companions, she found herself suddenly free.

The hounds of Fear had given up the chase. The great sea elephants had
driven them away. Here was no longer loneliness.

The great beasts sunning themselves on the flat rocks seemed more
numerous and, as she crossed the river, a monster coming in from the sea
in a thunder of foam saluted the land with a roar.

She recognized, or thought she recognized, the great bull that had
followed her, he was lying, to-day, half-tilted to one side, he looked
drunk with sun and laziness and as she came amongst them and sat down,
as she had sat that day, she found that though a hundred pairs of eyes
were watching her, scarcely a burly figure moved.

They had grown used to her, perhaps, or perhaps they recognized that she
did not fear them now in the least, or that she had come for refuge and
friendship.

Then she rose up and passing amongst them as a friend amongst friends
came towards the caves in the basalt cliffs. They were smaller than the
caves to the west but they were dry and free from water drip. She chose
one and put her bundle down with the axe beside it.

PART III

CHAPTER XVIII

GOD MADE FRIENDSHIP

The place was as populous as a town. That was the soul-satisfying fact
which she absorbed as she sat with the bundle and axe beside her. To be
lonely here one would have to be deaf and blind and without the sense of
smell. Now that their attention was no longer strained by watching her
the great brutes filled the place with all sorts of sounds, grunts and
grumbles, puffs and snorts like the escape of steam from a locomotive
and now and then the flop of a great body changing position. There was
another sound she got to know and recognize, after a while, the
grumbling and rumbling of their interiors. Infested with se