After two days’ dark captivity, Anne could not but be relieved by coming out, and she was anxious to understand where she was.  It was, though only in March, glowing with warmth, as the sun beat against the cliffs behind, of a dark red brown, in many places absolutely black, in especial where a cascade, swelled by the rains into imposing size, came roaring, leaping, and sparkling down a sheer precipice.  On either side the cove or chine was closely shut in by treeless, iron-coloured masses of rock, behind one of which the few inhabited hovels were clustered, and the boat which had brought her was drawn up.  In front was the sea, still lashed by a fierce wind, which was driving the fantastically shaped remains of the great storm cloud rapidly across an intensely blue sky.  The waves, although it was the ebb, were still tremendous, and their roar re-echoed as they reared to fearful heights and broke with the reverberations that she had heard all along.  Peregrine kept quite high up, not venturing below the washed line of shingle, saying that the back draught of the waves was most perilous, and in a high wind could not be reckoned upon.

“No escape!” he said, as he perceived Anne’s gaze on the inaccessible cliff and the whole scene, the wild beauty of which was lost to her in its terrors.

“Where’s your ship?” she asked.

“Safe in Whale Chine.  No putting to sea yet, though it may be fair to-morrow.”

Then she put before him the first scheme she had thought out, of letting her escape to Sir Edmund Nutley’s house, whence she could make her way back, taking with her a letter that would prove his existence without involving him or his friends in danger.  And eagerly she argued, “You do not know me really!  It is only an imagination that you can be the better for my presence.”  Then, unheeding his fervid exclamation, “It was my dear mother who did you good.  What would she think of the way in which you are trying to gain me?”

“That I cannot do without you.”

“And what would you have in me?  I could be only wretched, and feel all my life—­such a life as it would be—­that you had wrecked my happiness.  Oh yes!  I do believe that you would try to make me happy, but don’t you see that it would be quite impossible with such a grief as that in my heart, and knowing that you had caused it?  I know you hate him, and he did you the wrong; but he has grieved for it, and banished himself.  But above all, of this I am quite sure, that to persist in this horrible evil of leaving him to die, because of your revenge, and stealing me away, is truly giving Satan such a frightful advantage over you that it is mere folly to think that winning me in such a way could do you any good.  It is just a mere delusion of his, to ruin us both, body and soul.  Peregrine, will you not recollect my mother, and what she would think?  Have pity on me, and help me away, and I would pledge myself never to utter a word of this place nor that could bring you and yours into danger.  We would bless and pray for you always.”