forthwith. The first need of this exhausted being was companionship. He
flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf beside the motionless
seated figure, and threw out a skirmishing line of gossip.

His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
in answer to Isbister's direct questions--and not to all of those. But he
made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.

He seemed even grateful, and when presently Isbister, feeling that his
unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that they should reascend
the steep and return towards Boscastle, alleging the view into Blackapit,
he submitted quietly. Halfway up he began talking to himself, and
abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. "What can be happening?" he
asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be happening? Spin, spin,
spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore."

He stood with his hand circling.

"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me,"

The man dropped his hand and turned again. They went over the brow and to
the headland beyond Penally, with the sleepless man gesticulating ever
and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerning his whirling brain.
At the headland they stood by the seat that looks into the dark mysteries
of Blackapit, and then he sat down. Isbister had resumed his talk
whenever the path had widened sufficiently for them to walk abreast. He
was enlarging upon the complex difficulty of making Boscastle Harbour in
bad weather, when suddenly and quite irrelevantly his companion
interrupted him again.