For he felt certain that even if he got down he
would never get up again. And so, when the triumphant shout from below
told him she was safely landed, he would wave a grateful hand and get
back from the edge and seat himself securely on a rock, till the rosy
face came laughing up between him and the shimmering sea, with trophy of
weed or shell or crystal quartz, and he would tell her all he knew about
them, and she would try to tell him of all he had missed by not coming
down.
There were wonderful great basins down there, all lined with pink and
green corallines, and full of the loveliest weeds and anemones and other
sea-flowers, and the rivulets that flowed from them to the sea were
lined pink and green, too. And this that she had brought him was the
flaming sea-weed, though truly it did not look it now, but in the water
it was, she assured him, of the loveliest, and there were great bunches
there so that the dark holes under the rocks were all alight with it.
She coaxed him doubtfully to the descent of the rounded headland facing
L'Etat, picking out an easy circuitous way for him, and so got him
safely down to her own special pool, hollowed out of the solid granite
by centuries of patient grinding on the part of the great boulders
within.
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