After a while, however, I turned my head, and noted that I was in a deep, low-vaulted, tunnel-shaped cave—or rather bottle-shaped, for it was enlarged about the place where I lay. I noted that I lay on furs, on a low, couch-like ledge; and I noted, too, that there was a wind outside, for at intervals a branch was bowed across the cave-mouth and withdrawn. Then I perceived that a little jar of water and a broken cake of barley meal stood just within reach; and straightway I was aware of a most interested appetite. I sat up again and began to eat and drink. The patch of sky reeled, danced, blurred, darkened,—and again grew clear and steady. I finished the barley bread, finished the little jar of water, and sat communing lucidly with my right mind.
It was manifest that I had been saved that night of my fall over the cliff (by Anderson?—I prayed not); that I had been desperately ill—for the hands and arms upon which I looked down with sarcastic pity were emaciated; that I had been tenderly cared for—for the couch was soft, the cave well kept, and a rude screen stood at one side to shield me when the winds came into the cave-mouth. I raised my hands to my head. It was bandaged; and at one side my hair had been much cut away. But my hair—how long the rest of it was! And then came a stroke of wonder—my once smooth chin was deeply bearded! How long, how long must I have rested here, to grow so patriarchal an adornment!
Stung to a fierce restlessness, and with a sinking at my heart, I rose, tottered to the cave-mouth, and looked out.
The world I had last seen was a green world on the threshold of June. The world I looked on now was a world of fading scarlets, the last fires of autumn fast dying from the ragged leafage.
Below, beyond trees and a field, was outspread the wide water of Minas, roughened to a cold and angry indigo under the wind. To the left, purple-dim and haze-wrapped, sat Blomidon. Grand Pré must be around to the left. Then the cave was in the face of the Piziquid bluff. So near to friends, yet hidden in a cave! What had happened the while I lay as dead? I tottered back to the couch, and fell on my back, and thought. My apprehensions were like a mountain of lead upon the pit of my stomach, and I laboured for my breath.