Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/151

140 and there of some awakening ocean bird. The cliffs, tawny and water-stained and sun-browned, rose aloft, curving inward, and shaping one of the many indents of the irregular southern coast; mighty ishafts of stone that seemed to touch the skies, and were deeply riven here and there in fissures filled with the clinging of the vine. Grand, solitary, wild, there was no human aid, no boat's help to be looked for here. The sea lay there, but between them and liberty it stretched, an inexorable desert, impassable, and giving no freedom except death.

"Moments are years; we cannot waste them," he muttered, as he looked across the waters, where no sail broke the space, and upward at the rocks which frowned, sterile and lonely, locking in the breadth of ribbed beach-sand. "A fisher-boat, sea-worthy, might save us still. There is a village that should lie not far from this. A cluster of fishing-cabins" "Yes, there is one a mile northward of us. A few huts under the cliff, and men who have the sea's strength in them when once they are afloat. Go you to them."

"Go! And leave you?"

"Else we must perish together."

"Better that!"