Notes

Here, on the other side of the island, the view was utterly different. The filmy enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water and the horizon was hard, clipped blue. Ralph wandered down to the rocks.
Down here, almost on a level with the sea, you could follow with your eye the ceaseless, bulging passage of the deep sea waves. They were miles wide, apparently not breakers or the banked ridges of shallow water.
They traveled the length of the island with an air of disregarding it and being set on other business; they were less a progress than a momentous rise and fall of the whole ocean. Now the sea would suck down, making
cascades and waterfalls of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and
plaster down the seaweed like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and
rise with a roar, irresistibly swelling over point and outcrop, climbing the
little cliff, sending at last an arm of surf up a gully to end a yard or so
from him in fingers of spray.
Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of the remoteness of the sea numbed his brain. Then gradually the almost infinite size of this water forced itself on his attention. This was the divider,
the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of
division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one was—
Simon was speaking almost in his ear. Ralph found that he had rock painfully gripped in both hands, found his body arched, the muscles of his neck stiff, his mouth strained open.
“You’ll get back to where you came from.”
Simon nodded as he spoke. He was kneeling on one knee, looking down from a higher rock which he held with both hands; his other leg stretched down to Ralph’s level.
Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon’s face for a clue.
“It’s so big, I mean—”
Simon nodded.
“All the same. You’ll get back all right. I think so, anyway.”
Some of the strain had gone from Ralph’s body. He glanced at the sea and then smiled bitterly at Simon.
“Got a ship in your pocket?”
Simon grinned and shook his head.
“How do you know, then?”
When Simon was still silent Ralph said curtly, “You’re batty.”
Simon shook his head violently till the coarse black hair flew backwards
and forwards across his face.
“No, I’m not. I just you’ll get back all right.”
For a moment nothing more was said. And then they suddenly smiled
at each other.
Roger called from the coverts.
“Come and see!”
The ground was turned over near the pig-run and there were droppings
that steamed. Jack bent down to them as though he loved them.
“Ralph—we need meat even if we are hunting the other thing.”
“If you mean going the right way, we’ll hunt.”
They set off again, the hunters bunched a little by fear of the mentioned
beast, while Jack quested ahead. They went more slowly than Ralph had
bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear. Jack
came up against some emergency of his craft and soon the procession
stopped. Ralph leaned against a tree and at once the daydreams came
swarming up. Jack was in charge of the hunt and there would be time to
get to the mountain—