native and trust to my German still being up to its old high water mark,
or should I lie low for the night? I simply stood and wondered for some
minutes, and then I decided on one prompt and immediate deed. The
parachute must be hidden, so far as that countryside was capable of
hiding anything.

I packed it up as neatly as I could, and then started for the low wall.
My first steps on the firm ground with its soft mat of clover and grasses
gave me an extraordinary sensation of pleasure. Merely to be alive and on
the earth again seemed to leave nothing to wish for. Close to the wall a
peewee rose suddenly from my feet and flapped off into the dusk with one
melancholy cry after another. "Peewee! Peewee!" I shall never hear that
sound without thinking of that lonesome misty field. I stopped and looked
round me anxiously, but not a living thing besides had been disturbed,
and presently I was stowing the parachute away in a bed of high rank
grass and docken just under the wall.

Then I stood still and listened again. Once more a distant sea bird
cried and I decided to make for the sound on the chance of finding the
coast line and getting at least one bearing. I followed the line of the
wall, crossed another low wall and another field of thin rough grass, and
then I realised that I was almost on the brink of the sea. The wash of
the swell on rocks met my ear and the dull misty green of the land faded
into the misty grey of wide waters.

I stepped over yet another of those low tumbledown walls and now I was on
the crisp short grass that fringes coasts, with rocks before me and the
sea quite visible about thirty feet below. So I had just made land and no
more! Poor Rutherford; I guessed his fate at once.