At the same time they were sailing so fast along bythe rocks that it was very exciting — it seemed as ifthey were doing two things at once; they were eatingtheir lunch here in the sun and they were also mak-ing for safety in a great storm after a shipwreck. Wouldthe water last? Would the provisions last? she askedherself, telling herself a story but knowing at the sametime what was the truth.
They would soon be out of it, Mr. Ramsay was say-ing to old Macalister; but their children would seesome strange things. Macalister said he was seventy-five last March; Mr. Ramsay was seventy-one. Mac-alister said he had never seen a doctor; he had neverlost a tooth. And that’s the way I’d like my childrento live — Cam was sure that her father was thinkingthat, for he stopped her throwing a sandwich into thesea and told her, as if he were thinking of the fisher-men and how they live, that if she did not want itshe should put it back in the parcel. She should notwaste it. He said it so wisely, as if he knew so well allthe things that happened in the world, that she put itback at once, and then he gave her, from his ownparcel, a gingerbread nut, as if he were a great Span-ish gentleman, she thought, handing a flower to alady at a window (so courteous his manner was). Buthe was shabby, and simple, eating bread and cheese;and yet he was leading them on a great expeditionwhere, for all she knew, they would be drowned.
‘That was where she sunk,’ said Macalister’s boysuddenly.238