I abandoned my caves and furniture to her use and sought me another
habitation.

Now as I went I fell to uneasy speculation regarding this woman, her
fierce, wild beauty, her shameless tongue, her proud and passionate temper,
her reckless furies; and bethinking me of all the manifest evil of her, I
felt again that chill of the flesh, that indefinable disgust, insomuch
that (the moon being bright and full) I must glance back, more than once,
half-dreading to see her creeping on my heels.

Having traversed Deliverance Sands I came into that cleft or defile, 'twixt
bush-girt, steepy cliffs, called Skeleton Cove, where I had builded me a
forge with bellows of goatskin. Here, too, I had set up an anvil (the which
had come ashore in a wreck, together with divers other tools) and a bench
for my carpentry. The roof of this smithy backed upon a cavern wherein I
stored my tools, timber and various odds and ends.

This place, then, I determined should be my habitation henceforth, there
being a little rill of sweet water adjacent and the cave itself dry and
roomy and so shut in by precipitous cliffs that any who might come to my
disturbance must come only in the one direction.

And now, as I judged, there being yet some hours to sunrise, I made myself
as comfortable as might be and having laid by sword and belt and set my
pistols within easy reach, I laid down and composed myself to slumber. But
this I could by no means compass, being fretted of distressful thought
and made vain and bitter repining for this ship that had come and sailed,
leaving me a captive still, prisoned on this hateful island with this wild
creature that methought more daemon than woman. And seeing myself thus
mocked of Fortune (in my blind folly) I fell to reviling the God that made