It took him three days to bring her back safe to life. It poured with rain during those three days but he managed to light little fires in one of the caves with seal blubber and routing out the things in her cave he found everything she had so carefully salved, the cups and plates, the tin of coffee, half empty now—everything, even to the tobacco the men had taken from the cache, he found Bompard’s tinder-box and the Swedish match box belonging to La Touche. He had given the woman life and she had given him tobacco and sometimes, sitting in the adjoining cave and smoking between nursing times, he would bring his big fist down on his thigh, just that.

Here was a woman starving to death and dying of thirst with food enough for a ship’s company at her elbow. And the tobacco! Where was the explanation? She was able to speak a little now. She had spoken at first in French, which he could not understand, then she spoke in English as good as his; another mystery. A woman all gone to pieces that spoke two tongues and was different somehow from any woman he had ever known.

Then the things she had said: “Who are you? I am not dreaming this? Are you really, really, truly—Oh, don’t leave me.” Crazy talk like that. And it was always “Oh, don’t leave me.” Then he would lay his pipe down carefully on the sand of the cave and pass through the sheeting rain to have a look at her. Sometimes she would have dozed off and he could get back to his pipe, sometimes she was awake and then he would have to sit down beside her and hold her hand and stroke it or play with her fingers just as one plays with the fingers of a child. At these moments he was transformed, he was no longer a man, he was a mother, and the hand that could break down the resistance of a bellying sail was the hand of a child. He no longer thought of her as the “poor woman,” an infant is sexless, so did she seem, or so would she have seemed had he thought of the matter. He didn’t. As a matter of fact thought was not his strong suit in the game of life. He was a man from the world of Things. That was why, perhaps, he made such a good sick nurse. He did not fuss, nor talk, his touch was firm, firm as his determination to “get food into her” and his hand, big as a ham, was delicate because it was the hand of a perfect steersman. It was used to handling women in the form of three thousand ton ships, coaxing them, humouring them—up to a point.

He fed her now from one of the tin cups. Every two hours of the day, unless she was asleep, half a cupful of food went into her whether she liked it or not; “hot stuff,” for though the firewood was done he found that the blubber alone was the best fuel in the world.

On the second day she was able to raise herself up, and once when he came in he found that she had been moving about the cave and that she had rearranged the blanket that did for a pillow.

Then on the morning when the blessed sun shone she was able to come out and sit on a patch of sand with one of the blankets for a rug.

She looked old and worn, but no longer terrible, and as she sat with her thin hands folded in her lap watching the great sea bulls and the cows, as if contemplating them for the first time, the man who had helped her out and placed her there was at a loss—she was a sight to inspire pity in a savage. He took his seat beside her on a piece of rock and rolling some tobacco in his hand stuffed his pipe.

“You’re all right now,” said he.

She nodded her head and smiled.

“Yes,” she said, “this is good.”

“Lucky I came along,” he said, “wouldn’t have seen you only an old tin hit my eye.”

He put the pipe in his pocket, got up, went to the cave where he did the cooking and came back with a cup half full of coffee and half a biscuit.

“Dip it in,” said he.

She did as she was bid. It was the first time he had given her coffee and the stimulant brought a flush to her cheeks and cheered her heart so that she began to talk.

“There are more biscuits in a place down the beach,” she said, “and down there,” she nodded to the left, “there are a lot of things hidden under a heap of stones. It’s beyond the river on the left.”

Then the empty cup began to shake in her hand and he took it from her.

“You’re not over strong yet,” said he, “but you’ll be better in a bit with this sun. Y’aren’t afraid of the sea cows, are you?”

She shook her head.

“Thought you wouldn’t be,” said he, “there’s no harm in them. Well, I’ll be moving about. I’ll go and have a look down the beach and see what’s to be found.”

He hung for a moment with the cup in his hand shading his eyes and looking seaward, then he turned towards the cave to put the cup back.

“What is your name?” she said, suddenly, bringing him to a halt.

“Raft,” said he.

“Raft,” she repeated the name several times in a low voice as if committing it to memory or turning it over in her mind.

“How long might you have been here?” he asked, standing in a doubtful manner, as though debating in his mind the wisdom of allowing her to strain her strength answering questions.

“I don’t know,” said she, “a long while. I was wrecked with two men from a yacht. The Gaston de Paris. We came here in a boat. They are both dead.”

At the name Gaston de Paris Raft nodded his head. Already a suspicion that she might be one of the yacht’s crowd had come into his mind, so the news came scarcely as a surprise.

“It was us you hit,” said he, “I’m one of the chaps from the old hooker.”

“The Albatross?”

“That’s her.”

She said nothing for a moment, looking away over at the islands. She could see the name, still, written as if on the night. Then she remembered the boat sail she had seen when adrift with Bompard and La Touche.

“There were four of us got off,” said he, “we struck them islands over there and put in but there was nothing but rocks in that part. Next day we put out, but got blown down the coast; we got smashed landing; all but a chap named Ponting and me went under, but one chap’s body was hove up and we stripped him. I’ve got his boots and his knife in that bundle over there in the cave, and Ponting’s. We saved a bag of bread.”

He took his seat again on the rock and, placing the cup beside him, took the pipe from his pocket, but he did not light it. He held it, rubbing the bowl reflectively. He seemed to have come to an end of his story.

“Did the other man die?” she asked.

“He went getting gulls’ eggs one day,” said Raft, “and slipped over the cliff. They’re big, the cliffs, down there. I found him all broke up on the rocks. He didn’t live more than a minute when I got to him and I had to leave him; the tide was coming up.”

“Poor man,” said she.

He rose up and, taking the cup, stood for a moment again looking seaward.

“Well, I’ll be off down the beach,” said he, “you won’t be frightened to be here by yourself?”

“No,” she replied, “but don’t go very far.”

“I’ll keep in sight,” said Raft.

He put the cup in the cave and off he went whilst she sat watching him; everything, life itself, seemed centred in him. A terrible feeling came over her at moments that he might vanish, that, looking away for a moment and turning again she might find him gone and nothing but the beach and the gulls.

Beyond the river he turned and saw her watching him and waved his hand as if to reassure her. She waved in reply and then sat watching till he reached the figure-head and stood to examine it.

He seemed very small from here. She saw him standing and looking inland, he had seen the cache, no doubt, and he would want to go to it; if he did that he would disappear from sight. But he did not go to it, he kept on always in view, exploring the rocks and the sands and stopping now and then as if to look back.

It seemed to her that he could read her mind and feel her terror of being left alone. Then her mind went back over the last few days.

She had been very near death. She had drunk the last of the water in the tin and had been too feeble to go for more. What had brought her to that pass? It seemed to her that the rocks, the sea and the sky had slowly sucked her vitality away from her till at last she could not eat, could not walk, could not think. All that time her mind had never thought of loneliness, the thing that was killing her had veiled itself by numbing her brain and weakening her body. But near death her mind had cleared and the great grief of desolation stood before her. Then God-sent, a form had pushed the grief aside and a hand had taken her lonely hand and a finger had moistened her lips. But it was the knowledge that the hand was a real hand that gave her the first lead back to life.

Then the last three days. The feeling of extreme helplessness and sickness and the knowledge that she was watched over and cared for and thought for—there was no word to express what all that meant. It turned the great rough figure to a spirit, great and tender and benign.

He was coming along back now carrying something he had picked up amongst the rocks. It was a crab.

A great satisfactory two pound crab bound up in kelp ribbon so craftily that it could neither bite nor escape. He put it on the sand for her to look at before taking it off to boil.

The sun was hot and as he stood whilst she admired his prize: “Don’t you feel the sun to your head?” asked he.

“No,” she replied, “I like it. I had a hat—a sou’wester but it’s in a cave away down the beach. There’s a dead man there.”

“A dead man?” said Raft.

“Yes. I killed him.”

“Killed him?”

“It was partly accident. He was one of the sailors. He was a bad man. The other sailor got lost and never came back and I was left alone with this man. He nearly frightened me to death.”

“Swab,” said Raft.

“Then one night he crawled into my cave in the dark and I struck out with the knife and it killed him—he’s lying there now. I didn’t mean to kill him, but he frightened me.”

“Swab,” said Raft, two tones deeper. Then he laughed as if to himself. “Well, that’s a go,” said he. He took a pull at his beard as he contemplated this slayer of men seated on her blankets at his feet. She glanced up and saw that he was laughing and a wan smile came around 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.