I see distinctly the land's end, and mentally calculate from the angle it makes with the ocean, the height of the cliffs.
Still the man-killer strides on, as straight as an arrow and as resolutely as if a hundred miles of desert, instead of ten thousand miles of water, stretched before him.

Three minutes more and--I set my teeth hard and draw a deep breath.

At any rate, it will be an easier end than burning, or dying of thirst--Another moment and-- But now the nandu, seeing that he will soon be treading the air, makes a desperate effort to stop short, in which failing he wheels half round, barely in time to save his life and mine, and then courses madly along the brink for miles, as if unable to tear himself away, keeping me in a state of continual fear, for a single slip, or an accidental swerve to the right, and we should have fallen headlong down the rocks, against which the waves are beating.
As night closes in he gradually--to my inexpressible relief--draws inland, making in a direction that must sooner or later take us back to the Cordillera, though a long way south of the pass by which we had descended to the desert.

But I have hardly sighted the outline of the mighty barrier, looming portentously in the darkness, when he alters his course once again, wenching this time almost due south.

And so he continues for hours, seldom going straight, now inclining toward the coast, anon facing toward the Cordillera but always on the southward tack, never turning to the north.
It was a beautiful night.