or lost my wits and perished so. O truly, truly, God is
infinitely merciful!"

Thus (and all unknowing) she rebuked my ungrateful despondency. For
(thinks I) if she, a woman accustomed to ease and comfort, may thus
front our desperate fortunes undismayed and with faith unshaken, how
much more should I, a man inured to suffering and hardened by
privation? Thus, checking my gloomy foreboding, I too breathed a
prayer to God for His infinite mercies, and thereafter fell to
pondering how I might supply our more pressing needs with such small
means as I possessed; and so in a while, dozed off to sleep.

I started up, knife in hand, to find the moon very big and bright,
flooding the world with a radiance wondrous to behold; and blinking
drowsily, I wondered what had waked me. Now as I gazed about me the
place seemed all at once to take on an evil look, what with its steepy
sides a-bristle with tangled vines and bushes and pierced here and
there with black holes and fissures, and I shivered. The fire being
low I, minded to replenish it, was groping for my fuel when I started
and remained peering up at the cliff above, with ears on the stretch
and every nerve a-tingle. The night was very calm and still, for the
wind had died away, and save for the distant murmur of the surf beyond
the reef, nought was to hear; then and all at once, from one of those
black holes in the rock above I heard a long-drawn, sighing breath and
therewith a faint scuffling. Slowly and cautiously I got to my feet
and, with knife gripped ready, began to creep thither; and now within
one of these gloomy crevices in the rock-face I saw a crouching shape
that, as I drew nearer, sprang away with a snort and clatter, and I saw
this was a large goat.

And surely no poor wight ever more relieved than I as, sheathing my
knife, I wiped the sweat from me; and now to relief was added a mighty
satisfaction, for where was one goat would be others. Thus, my fears
allayed, and bethinking me how savoury was a mess of goat's-flesh, I
fell a-watering at the mouth like the hungry animal I was.

Having no more mind to sleep (and the moon so marvellous bright) I
wandered forth of these shadowy rocks and, being upon the sands, stood
to look about me. Before me stretched the wide ocean, a desolation of
heaving waters that, rolling shorewards, broke in splendour 'neath the
moon; to my right lay a curve of silver beach backed by cliffs and
groves of stately palms; and to