"You will let me help," she said, when they had climbed on board, and she saw him setting to work on the rabbits. "Can you make biscuit?" "If there is anything to make it with," so he provided her with flour and water and a frying-pan, and tackled his own repulsive job, looking forward to the best-made biscuit they had had since they came ashore. "You have no butter--lard--dripping--fat--nothing?" she asked. "There is some fat pork. We stew it with the rabbit as a rule." "Get me some and I will render it down and we shall have much better cakes. Men never know how to cook unless they are trained to it. You have no seasonings of any kind--no? Nor salt?" "Not a scrap." "We might find something on shore there. I saw many little plants. We will search next time we go." Yes, indeed, even the repellent cooking took on quite a new aspect and became a joyous pastime in her company, and they presently sat down to such a meal as he had not tasted since he left Liverpool. Many a more abundant one he had had, but none with such a flavour to it, and that was due entirely to the deft white hands that had helped to prepare it. Meals hitherto had been in the nature of necessary nuisances. He and the mate had often sat eating without a word between them, and with perhaps less enjoyment in it than the rabbits out there among the sandhills. But, henceforth, meals would be feasts full of delight because of this stranger girl, whose presence would be salt and savour and seasoning to the poorest of fare. "And he--the mate,--when does he eat?" she asked suddenly, after they had begun. "Not till he gets back,--at night-fall as a rule. It's a good long way, you see, and he likes to spend all his time working." "I hope he will find me some shoes,--and some needles and thread. Then I shall feel much happier.... And you really think we shall never get away from here?" she asked, quite cheerfully. "If we could prevail on Macro to think of building a boat, instead of amassing treasure-trove, we might at all events try it. Nova Scotia is but a hundred miles away, he says,----" "So close?" "But he seems to think it a risky voyage, and so far we have come across no tools with which to build. You see, they are not things likely to come ashore." "For myself, I believe I could be quite content to live here," she said again. "For ever?--Never to get back to the larger life of the world as long as you lived?" "Ah--that! ... I do not know.... It is a very hollow life after all, that larger life of the world." "To grow old here," he said thoughtfully, emphasising his points with slowly nodding head. "To be the last one left alive perhaps.... To be all alone, sick, starving, dying slowly in the dark, unable to lift a finger...." "I would drown myself if it came to that. It sounds horrible.... Perhaps, after all, we had better build the boat and get away."