The sight of the great wall of tumbled rocks on his right, and the
sudden remembrance of his previous passage over it, set him wondering if
it might not be possible to find better shelter in some of those
fissures across which he had had to swing himself by the hands on the
previous occasion. For this was the leeward side of the island, and the
huge bulk of it rose like a protecting shoulder between him and the
gale, whereas his bee-hive, on the exposed flank of the rock, got the
full force of it. So he scooped a hole in the friable black soil and
deposited his eggs in it and crawled along to the wall.
The tumbled fragments looked much less fearsome than they had done in
the fog. He found no difficulty in clambering among them now, when he
could see clearly what he was about, and he wormed his way in and out,
and up and down, but could not light on any of those tricky spaces which
had seemed to him so dangerous before.
And then, as he crawled under one huge slab, a black void lay before
him, of no great width but evidently deep. It took many minutes'
peering into the depths to accustom his eyes to the dimness.
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