climbing.  I walked on slowly, casting many a reluctant glance behind me at the calm waters, with the boats gliding to and fro among the islets.  I was just giving my last look to them when the loose stones on the crumbling path gave way under my tread, and before I could recover my foothold I found myself slipping down the almost perpendicular face of the cliff, and vainly clutching at every bramble and tuft of grass growing in its clefts.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

An island without A doctor.

I had not time to feel any fear, for, almost before I could realize the fact that I was falling, I touched the ground.  The point from which I had slipped was above the reach of the water, but I fell upon the shingly beach so heavily that I was hardly conscious for a few minutes.  When I came to my senses again, I lay still for a little while, trying to make out where I was, and how I came there.  I was stunned and bewildered.  Underneath me were the smooth, round pebbles, which lie above the line of the tide on a shore covered with shingles.  Above me rose a dark, frowning rock, the chilly shadow of which lay across me.  Without lifting my head I could see the water on a level with me, but it did not look on a level; its bright crested waves seemed swelling upward to the sky, ready to pour over me and bury me beneath them.  I was very faint, and sick, and giddy.  The ground felt as if it were about to sink under me.  My eyelids closed languidly when I did not keep them open by an effort; and my head ached, and my brain swam with confused fancies.

After some time, and with some difficulty, I comprehended what had happened to me, and recollected that it was already past mid-day, and Mrs. Tardif would be waiting for me.  I attempted to stand up, but an acute pain in my foot compelled me to desist.  I tried to turn myself upon the pebbles, and my left arm refused to help me.  I could not check a sharp cry of suffering as my left hand fell back upon the stones on which I was lying.  My fall had cost me something more than a few minutes’ insensibility and an aching head.  I had no more power to move than one who is bound hand and foot.

After a few vain efforts I lay quite still again, trying to deliberate as well as I could for the pain which racked me.  I reckoned up, after many attempts in which first my memory failed me, and then my faculty of calculation, what the time of the high tide would be, and how soon Tardif would come home.  As nearly as I could make out, it would be high water in about two hours.  Tardif had set off at low water, as his boat had been anchored at the foot of the rock, where the ladder hung; but before starting he had said something about returning at high tide, and running up his boat on the beach of our little bay.  If he did that, he must pass close by me.  It was Saturday morning, and he was not in the habit of staying out late on Saturdays, that he might prepare for the services of the next day.  I might count, then, upon the prospect of him running the boat into the bay, and finding me there in about two hours’ time.