Elzevir and I had often talked over what was to be done when my leg should be sound again, and resolved to take passage to St. Malo in the Bonaventure, and there lie hid till the pursuit against us should have ceased.  For though ’twas wartime, French and English were as brothers in the contraband, and the shippers would give us bit and sup, and glad to, as long as we had need of them.  But of this I need not say more, because ’twas but a project, which other events came in to overturn.

Yet ’twas this very errand, namely, to fix with the Bonaventure’s men the time to take us over to the other side, that Elzevir had gone out, on the day of which I shall now speak.  He was to go to Poole, and left our cave in the afternoon, thinking it safe to keep along the cliff-edge even in the daylight, and to strike across country when dusk came on.  The wind had blown fresh all the morning from south-west, and after Elzevir had left, strengthened to a gale.  My leg was now so strong that I could walk across the cave with the help of a stout blackthorn that Elzevir had cut me:  and so I went out that afternoon on to the ledge to watch the growing sea.  There I sat down, with my back against a protecting rock, in such a place that I could see up-Channel and yet shelter from the rushing wind.  The sky was overcast, and the long wall of rock showed grey with orange-brown patches and a darker line of sea-weed at the base like the under strake of a boat’s belly, for the tide was but beginning to make.  There was a mist, half-fog, half-spray, scudding before the wind, and through it I could see the white-backed rollers lifting over Peveril Point; while all along the cliff-face the sea-birds thronged the ledges, and sat huddled in snowy lines, knowing the mischief that was brewing in the elements.

It was a melancholy scene, and bred melancholy in my heart; and about sun-down the wind southed a point or two, setting the sea more against the cliff, so that the spray began to fly even over my ledge and drove me back into the cave.  The night came on much sooner than usual, and before long I was lying on my straw bed in perfect darkness.  The wind had gone still more to south, and was screaming through the opening of the cave; the caverns down below bellowed and rumbled; every now and then a giant roller struck the rock such a blow as made the cave tremble, and then a second later there would fall, splattering on the ledge outside, the heavy spray that had been lifted by the impact.

I have said that I was melancholy; but worse followed, for I grew timid, and fearful of the wild night, and the loneliness, and the darkness.  And all sorts of evil tales came to my mind, and I thought much of baleful heathen gods that St. Aldhelm had banished to these underground cellars, and of the Mandrive who leapt on people in the dark and strangled them.  And then fancy played another trick on me, and I seemed to see a man lying on the cave-floor with a drawn