"I would. It was ghastly out there in the night," and he told her how he had lived in the big case of curtains, and how the pile heaved and writhed like a wounded sea-serpent under the tide and the gale. And how he had brought back some flour after all, though it had been no easy job as there was no wind to help him. "It is dear flour," she said. "It nearly cost us our lives. I would sooner live on raw meat another time." LVII That was their sorest trial of the winter. Often, over the fire of a night, they talked of it and told one another all there was to tell of their feelings and their fears, and their love burned the brighter for its tempering. But Avice was soon herself again, and as the Spring quickened all about and in them, the bitterness of the experience gradually faded out of their recollection and only the brightness was left. And then there was so much to interest one everywhere that the days were hardly long enough for all there was to see and do. First, seals--mothers and babies galore. Those sandy beaches of the northern coast seemed a favourite basking place and nursery, and Avice could creep along behind the sandhills, and crawl up among the wire-grass, and peep over, and she never tired of watching them. There was something so human in the way the babies snuggled up to their mothers when they were hungry, and still more in the way the mothers looked down at their nurslings. And the baby-rabbits. They were almost as entrancing as the seals, but far shyer and more difficult to spy upon. For the simple lifting of a head among the sparse tufts of grass set the hollow below alive with tiny bobbing white scuts, whose terrified owners tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get below ground. Avice would not hear of rabbit-meat in those days. She said the very thought of it made her feel like a cannibal. And lastly,--birds. They were coming back in flights. The eastern point seemed their chosen ground, but closer at hand stray families were found, and importunate babies were being fed by the cold-eyed mothers with whom, a few months later, they would be waging the fierce battle for food. But Avice never took to the birds as she did to the seals and rabbits. She could never forget what they would grow into--brigands and fighters and cold-blooded raucous screamers at all times. Now and again they lived on the 'Jane and Mary' for a week by way of a change, and fish was always obtainable whether they were afloat or ashore.