back her
life seemed a shield against everything, just as a wall is a shield
against the wind; she was content to sit in its shelter and rest. The
idea of new exertions and unknown places terrified her.

"But how are you to know the bay?" asked she, "there may be a good many
bays along the coast."

"No," said Raft, "Ponting told me there wasn't a decent anchorage but
this. He said this bay wasn't to be mistook, looks as if it was cut out
with a spade and the cliffs run high and black, there's a seal beach
that way and it's after seals the ships come. Well, there's time enough
to think of it seeing you are not fit to move yet."

"Oh, I'll soon be all right," said she. "I'm getting stronger every
day."

"What gets me," said Raft, "is how you fell to pieces like that, with
all that stuff at your elbow and a river close by."

"It was being alone," replied she, "I did not know it at the time, but I
got so that I did not care to eat and then at last I believe I didn't
eat anything at all. I couldn't have imagined that just being alone
would make a person like that. You see I had food and water. If I had
been compelled to hunt about for food I expect I would have been all
right, as it was I had nothing to do and was just driven in on myself."

Raft said nothing for a moment, he was turning this over in his mind. He
could not understand it. The idea of a person with plenty of food and a
good set of teeth dying of starvation just because she was lonely seemed
to him outrageous, yet he knew she was speaking the truth. It was
another strange thing about this strange woman. She was altogether
strange, different from any human being he had ever met and growing more
different every day now that she was "filling out," and getting her
voice back.

That voice, soft and musical and refined, had disturbed the sea
elephants when she first talked to them as people talk to horses and
dogs, it was something they had never heard before in the language of
tone, and so it was with this sea animal with a red beard. He could not
tell whether he liked it or not, never asked himself the question, it
was part of her general strangeness and to be considered along with her
clinging, man killing and double-tongued qualities, also with the fact
that she had starved almost to death because she was alone; also with
her eyes and new face, for she was growing younger looking every day and
better looking, and her eyes, naturally lovely, were growing