‘She comes too,’ said I. We walked back together, Denny being unusually silent and serious. I thought that even his audacious courage was a little dashed by the sight and the associations of that grim place, so I said: ‘Cheer up. If that other fellow got through the rocks, we can.’ ‘Oh, hang the rocks!’ said Denny scornfully. ‘I wasn’t thinking of them.’ ‘Then what are you so glum about?’ ‘I was wondering,’ said Denny, freeing himself from my arm, ‘how Beatrice Hipgrave would get on with Euphrosyne.’ I looked at Denny. I tried to feel angry, or even, if I failed in that, to appear angry. But it was no use. Denny was imperturbable. I took his arm again. ‘Thanks, old man,’ said I. ‘I’ll remember.’ For when I considered the very emphatic assertions which I had made to Denny before we left England, I could not honestly deny that he was justified in his little reminder. CHAPTER VIII A KNIFE AT A ROPE Some modern thinkers, I believe--or perhaps, to be quite safe, I had better say some modern talkers--profess to estimate the value of life by reference to the number of distinct sensations which it enables them to experience. Judged by a similar standard, my island had been, up to the present time, a brilliant success; it was certainly fulfilling the function, which Mrs Kennett Hipgrave had appropriated to it, of whiling away the time that must elapse before my marriage with her daughter and providing occupation for my thoughts during this weary interval. The difficulty was that the island seemed disinclined to restrict itself to this modest sphere of usefulness; it threatened to monopolise me, and to leave very little of me or my friends, by the time that it had finished with us. For, although we maintained our cheerfulness, our position was not encouraging. Had matters been anything short of desperate above ground it would have been madness to plunge into that watery hole, whose egress was unknown to us, and to take such a step on the off-chance of finding at the other end the Cypriote fishermen, and of obtaining from them either an alliance, or, if that failed, the means of flight. Yet we none of us doubted that to take the plunge was the wiser course. I did not believe in the extreme peril of the passage, for, on further questioning, Phroso told us that the Englishman had come through, not only alive and well, but also dry. Therefore there was a path, and along a path that one man can go four men can go; and Phroso, again attired, at my suggestion, in her serviceable boy’s suit, was the equal of any of us. So we left considering whether, and fell to the more profitable work of asking how, to go. Hogvardt and Watkins went off at once to the point of departure, armed with a pick, a mallet, some stout pegs, and a long length of rope. All save the last were ready on the premises, and that last formed always part of Hogvardt’s own equipment; he wore it round his waist, and, I believe, slept in it, like a mediæval ascetic.