her
eyes, it seemed to him like a glimmer of sunshine from inside of her.
Then bending down he pulled up the blanket that had slipped from her
left shoulder and settled it in its place.

"I'll tell you all about it some time," said she, "when I feel
stronger."

"Ay, ay," said Raft. Then he went off with the crab to boil it.

As he attended to this business in the cave, half-sitting, half-kneeling
before the little fire, he chuckled to himself now and then, and now and
then he would bring his great hand down on his thigh with a slap.

The idea of her killing a man seemed to him the height of humour. He
didn't put much store on men's lives in general, and none at all on the
life of an unknown swab who deserved his gruel. Then he was of the type
that admires a fighting thing much more than a peaceful and placid
thing, and he felt the pleasure of a man who has rescued a seemingly
weak and inoffensive creature only to find that it has pluck and teeth
of its own.

She had gone up a lot in his estimation. Besides, her feebleness and
forlorn condition had wounded him in a great soft part of his nature
where the hurt felt queer. This new knowledge somehow eased the hurt. He
could think of her now apart from her condition and think more kindly of
her, for the strange fact remains that the very weakness and forlornness
that had wakened his boundless compassion had antagonized him. When he
had found the crab the idea had come to him that here was some different
sort of food to "put into her;" he was thinking that same thought now
but with more enthusiasm. Yes, she had gone up a lot in his estimation.

CHAPTER XXIV

A DREAM

This same Raft whom the fo'c'sle could subdue to the surroundings,
making him as faithful a part of the picture as the kerosene lamp, on
the beach stood immense both in size and significance.

It was as though the fo'c'sle had the power to dwindle him, the beach,
to expand him.

The girl had never seen him in the fo'c'sle so she could not appreciate
the difference that environment made in him, and perhaps she saw him
ever so slightly magnified, but it seemed to her that he was big enough
to form part of the landscape, that he was one with the seven mile beach
and the Lizard Point and the great islands and the sea elephants.

Not only had she been crushed down by loneliness; size had helped. Raft
seemed to reduce the size of things, so that the seven mile strand and
the vast islands and sea