This is right, this is it, Cam kept feeling, as shepeeled her hard-boiled egg. Now she felt as she didin the study when the old men were reading TheTimes. Now I can go on thinking whatever I like,and I shan’t fall over a precipice or be drowned, forthere he is, keeping his eye on me, she thought.

At the same time they were sailing so fast alongby the rocks that it was very exciting—it seemed asif they were doing two things at once; they wereeating their lunch here in the sun and they were alsomaking for safety in a great storm after a shipwreck.Would the water last? Would the provisions last?she asked herself, telling herself a story but knowingat the same time what was the truth.

They would soon be out of it, Mr Ramsay wassaying to old Macalister; but their children wouldsee some strange things. Macalister said he wasseventy-five last March; Mr Ramsay was seventy-one. Macalister said he had never seen a doctor;he had never lost a tooth. And that’s the way I’dlike my children to live—Cam was sure that herfather was thinking that, for he stopped her throw-ing a sandwich into the sea and told her, as if he werethinking of the fishermen and how they live, that ifshe did not want it she should put it back in theparcel. She should not waste it. He said it so wisely,as if he knew so well all the things that happened inthe world, that she put it back at once, and then hegave her, from his own parcel, a gingerbread nut, asif he were a great Spanish gentleman, she thought,