He determined to spend the rest of the day among the cliffs, and return to Flint House when night fell.
He walked away, briskly at first, but with a more laggard step as he plunged into the shelter of the great rocks, for he had had nothing to eat since the night before, and was beginning to be conscious of his weakness.
But he strode on, doggedly enough, for more than an hour, until he found himself at a part of the coast he had not seen before--a theatre of black rocks, with dark towering walls, and a hissing sea whitening at the base.
At the foot of these cliffs three jagged conical rocks rose bare and glistening, the spray from the broken sea dashing far up their sides.

As Charles stood there, looking down, he saw a man appear from the edge of the furthest one and walk rapidly across the sloping shelf of rock which spanned the narrow bay near the surface of the sea.

His heart leapt within him as he took in the figure of the man.

It was Thalassa.
As Charles climbed down from the higher cliffs to intercept him, there came to his mind an imperfectly comprehended fragment of conversation which he had overheard, between waking and dozing, in the train that morning.

The voices drifted to his dulled hearing from the next compartment, where some men seemed to be discussing somebody of whom they stood in dread, somebody who was forever striding along the cliffs with his eyes fixed on some distant horizon, as though seeking some one.