All about him where he sat, the grey rock pushed through a thin friable soil like the bones of an ill-buried skeleton.

And everywhere in the scanty soil grew thick little rounded cushions, half grass, half moss, varying in size from an apple to a foot-stool, which came out whole at a pluck or a kick.

After breakfast he would plug up every hole in his shelter, and pile half-a-dozen sizeable pieces outside with which to close the front door.
Then, if he could find anything in the shape of fuel, he saw his way to a dinner of fried bacon, but it would have to be after dark when the smoke would be invisible.
But first he must find out about his water supply.
Down at the south end, Nance had said.

That must be over there, on that almost-detached stack of rocks, where the waves seemed to break loudest.
So, after another crawl up to the ridge to make certain that no boats were about--for he had frequently seen them fishing in the neighbourhood of L'Etat--he crept down the flank of his pyramid almost to sea-level to get across to the outer pile.
He had to pick his way with caution across a valley of black rocks, rifted and chasmed by the fury of the waves.

He could imagine--or thought he could, but came far short of it--how the great green rollers would thunder through that black gully in the winter storms.
There were great wells lined all round with rich brown sea-weeds, and narrow chasms in whose hidden depths the waters swooked and gurgled like unseen monsters, and whose broken edges, on which he had to step, were like the rough teeth of gigantic saws set up on end alongside one another.
He crawled across these rough serrations and scaled the rifted black wall in front, and came at once on a number of shallow pools of rain-water lying in the hollows of a mighty slab.
But the moment his head rose above the level of the steep black wall his ears were filled with a deafening roaring and rushing, supplemented by most tremendous dull thuddings which shook the stack like the blows of a mighty flail.
From behind a further wall there rose a boiling mist, through which lashed up white jets of spray which slanted over the rocks beyond in a continuous torrent.
He crawled to the further wall and looked over into a deep black gully, some fifteen feet wide and perhaps thirty feet deep, into which, out of a perfectly calm sea, most monstrous waves came roaring and leaping, till the whole chasm was foaming and spuming like an over-boiling milk-pan.