The cliffs were high and precipitous, but they were no particular shape, being, as Hugh said, merely the edge of Australia. The children scrambled along till they reached the turn of the coast-line, beyond which were more rocks and cliffs, much the same as those about them. "Perhaps it isn't here at all," Prudence said, as they seated themselves in a row on the edge of a big boulder; "the message didn't say it was. It might be anywhere. Perhaps that bottle came hundreds of miles, and the Duke's Nose is at the South Pole." "More likely Kangaroo Island or Yorke's Peninsula," Hugh said. "We might sail the raft across--it's only about fifty miles to the Peninsula." "How'd you get her to go?" asked Jerry. "We couldn't swim fifty miles; half a mile is my limit at a stretch; Dick can do three-quarters." "We'd have to use the sail and tack a bit, and we'd have the oars." "What about food?" asked Prudence. "We'd sling it in a can on the mast. Water's the trouble; we'd have to distil sea-water, and that takes coal and might be a bit difficult; there isn't a place for coal on board yet." Mollie remembered the attar of roses and decided not to embark upon that voyage. "We would be pretty thirsty before there was enough water distilled for us all to drink," she thought to herself. "Well, we'll have to be getting home now," said Prudence, with a sigh. "It will be dark before so very long." A somewhat silent and subdued party set out on the homeward scramble, the boys in front, Mollie and Prue together, and Grizzel in the rear, being hampered by her bootfuls of periwinkles, which would keep falling out. She stopped at last, and, sitting down, she laced her boots tightly up and tied the tops round with the lace ends. When she looked up from this task she stopped again to admire the gorgeous sunset. The whole sky was ablaze, and the sea had changed from blue to crimson and gold; the wet beach was gleaming like an opal, pale-rose and lavender, with fiery amber lights shimmering on the rippled sand. The brilliant glow of the western sky was reflected in the east, and the cliffs stood out sharply against the light, themselves flushed with pink. Grizzel's keen young gaze ran along the outline, black where it cut the sky. "There's nothing there," she said to herself, "only that flagstaff hut, and it's as square as square."