"Who would ever have thought that men would cling to such places?" she
said. "I don't know whether I am glad or sorry that I came."

One could see that she was moved. Life had taken a wider aspect for her.
She doubtless knew of poverty and suffering, but to her they had been
abstract things near which her footsteps had never carried her.

"In another year or two it will be deserted," I told her. "The few sticks
on the island have all been cut down, and they have begun to burn the
boards of the abandoned house, though they also get a little driftwood
for fuel. That is the story of many places on this coast, after the
people have exhausted the scanty supply of wood."

She evidently thought it marvelous that such desolate bits of rock should
have found human limpets to cling to them and be able to support life
after a fashion. Then she began to look at the man who was lying in the
bottom of the boat. Although he was very pale and weak he looked
contentedly at the sky and the fleecy clouds, and when his eyes caught
hers he smiled bashfully. And the instinct then moved her, which lies in
every proper feminine heart, however dormantly, to mother something or
somebody.

The screaming feathered life no longer interested her, nor the surging of
the crested waves against the cliffs, nor the cleaving of the water by
our little ship. She took a step forward and sat down on the rough
boards, beside this wreck of manhood we were bringing in, unmindful of
the dried fish-scales that would flake off upon her skirts. It was surely
an unconscious movement of hers when her hand went out and rested on the
fisherman's rough paw.