Quendale had promised
to my father and others that he would be back again in Pomona in a
few months, but since that time he had never been heard of.
Now it happened that on the fifth day after the wreck of the Undine
(for such was the vessel's name) my father was taking his small
boat round to Borwick, a little hamlet two miles south of Skaill
Bay. On passing the place where the vessel struck, now calm and
peaceful after the storm, he shortened sail and rowed inshore. A
little distance up the face of the red cliff, above the high-water
mark, and hidden by a projecting rock, there was a "scurro," or
fissure, which opened into a large cavern. He had discovered this
cavern when he was a boy, on some bird-nesting expedition; and now,
scarcely knowing why he did so--except, perhaps, for the passing
thought that some of the wreckage had been washed into it by the
high waves--he climbed up from his boat and entered the cave. To
his astonishment he found there a half-starved man, who had been on
board the Undine at the time of the disaster. Having found the cave
in his endeavours to scale the cliff, this unfortunate man had
contrived to live there during the five long days and nights since
the wreck by subsisting on shellfish, seaweed, and a few sea-birds'
eggs.
What surprised my father more than all, however, was that the man
had as a companion a helpless little child.
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