CHAPTER XXVITHE GREAT WIND
The sun sank, broadened out and banded with mist beyond the Lizard Point, and before his upper limb had been swallowed by the rocks the business began with a blow from the hills.
Most winds come in gusts and pauses, this wind from the Infernal Regions came at first steady and warm, never ceasing, steadily growing like the thrust of an infinite sword driven with a rapidly increasing momentum and a murmur like the voice of Speed herself.
Raft and the girl saw that the sea elephants were herding up into the shelter of the cliffs and that the gulls had vanished as though they had never been.
And still the wind increased, its voice now a long monotonous cry, steadily sharpening, yet deepening, stern as the Voice of Wrath.
“It’s blowing up,” said Raft, “and there’s more coming.”
Then over the cliff and undershot by the last rays of sunset came the clouds chased and harried by the wind, tearing before and torn by the teeth of the gale.
Raft and the girl stood watching till pebbles and rocks the size of coconuts began to fall on the beach blown over the cliff edge, till the sea, flat and milk-white, seemed to bend under the stress, till it would seem that the very islands would be blown away.
The girl felt light-headed and giddy as though the rush above had rarefied the air under the cliffs. Not a drop of rain fell, the wind held the sky and the whole world. It seemed loosed from some mysterious keeping never to be recaptured until it had blown the sea away and flattened the earth.
And still it increased.
Raft, taking the girl by the arm, drew her back into the cave; she was trembling. It seemed to her that this was no storm, that something had gone wrong with the scheme of things, that this Voice steadily being keyed up was the voice of some string keeping everything together, stretched to its utmost and sure to snap.
Then it snapped.
The whole of Kerguelen seemed to burst like a bomb-shell with a blaze of light shewing islands and sea.
Then again it seemed to burst with a light struggling through a deluge.
The boom of the rain on the sea came between the thunder crashes whilst a giant on the hills seemed to stand steadily working a flashlight, a light so intense that now and again through broken walls of rain the islands could be seen like far white ghosts wreathed in mist.
They sat down on the floor of the cave and the man put his arm about the girl as if to protect her; then something came sniffing at them, it was a little sea elephant that had got astray and scared by the work outside had crept in for shelter and company. The girl rested her hand on it and it lay still.
It seemed to her now that she could hear the gods of the storm as they battled, hear their cries and breathing and trampling, whilst every moment a thousand foot giant in full armour would come crashing to earth, knee, shoulder and helmet hitting the rocks in succession.
“It’s a big blow,” came Raft’s voice, “no call to be scared.”
He was holding her to him like a child whilst she held to her the little sea elephant, and so they remained, the three of them until the big blow, failing to tear Kerguelen from its foundations, began to pause like a spent madman.
The flashlight man on the hills began to work his apparatus more slowly and now the thunder seemed doing its vast work away out at sea and all sounds became gradually merged in the enormous, continuous sound of the rain.
The little sea elephant seemed suddenly to take fright at the strange company it found itself in and went tumbling and sniffing out to find its mates, whilst through the night came the occasional “woof” of a bull as if giving praise that the worst was over.
“The old sea cows know it’s done,” said Raft, “now you’d better get under your blankets,—you aren’t afraid to be alone?”
“I’m not afraid a bit now,” said she. She patted his hand as a child might and he crawled out and she heard him swearing at the rain as he made for his hole in the cliff.
She remembered the porpoises and fell to thinking of what would have happened had she and Raft started on their expedition yesterday or the day before. That wind, which sent rocks flying on to the beach, would have blown them away.
She said this next morning as they stood watching the sea. The sea was worth watching. The due-south wind had stirred the heart of the ocean from west of Enderby land, and, like a trumpeter, was leading a vast flood that split on Heard Island only to re-form and burst on the southern shores of Kerguelen.
They could hear the vague far-off roar of it all those leagues away beyond the mountains, mixed with the cry of the wind still blowing a full gale, and beyond the shelter of the land they could see the islands getting it, bombarded by the waves and up to their shoulders in sea-smoke and foam.
Then as they stood, suddenly and like a thing shot dead, the wind ceased, and in the silence the roar of the beaches far and near arose like a fume of sound. Then, as suddenly, the wind came shouting out of the west, piling up a cross sea that leapt like the water in a boiling pot.
“I’m thinking when this blow is over we may have a spell of fine weather,” said Raft, “and it will be just as well for us to be making our plans and getting things ready so’s we won’t be behind hand when the fine spell comes.”
“I think so too,” said she, “we will have to take food with us—how much?”
“Enough for a month,” said he, “who knows, we may have to come back, and there’s not much to be had elsewhere.” Then he fell into thought for a moment, “maybe stuff for a fortnight will be enough for there’s birds and rabbits to be got, and gulls’ eggs. Them old penguins let you screw their necks as if it come natural to them, we don’t want to take too big a load.”
Then they found themselves at a loss, it was quite easy to arrange to take a fortnight’s food, but how much did that mean?
They determined to use two blankets for sacks and then made a rough calculation, based on imagination, and collected together tins of meat and vegetables and the remaining biscuits, the result was a burden that two people might have carried but not very far.
“We’ve overshot it,” said Raft.
“We’ll never be able to carry all that,” said the girl, “or if we did we would have to go so slowly that the journey would be much longer—it cuts both ways.”
They reduced the load by nearly a half.
“There’s one thing,” said he, “there’s no callto take water with us, there’s holes full of water everywhere, seems to me in this place.”
Then he turned to look at the weather.
The wind was less and the clouds were thinning and the air had the feel of a break coming. Then, just before sunset the clouds parted in the west and the sun went down in a sky red as blood.
“We’ll start tomorrow,” said Raft.
CHAPTER XXVIITHE CORRIDOR
The next morning broke grey and fair.
When the girl came out she found that Raft had collected the things to be taken in one bundle tied up in a blanket. He had also set out breakfast. The remainder of the stores he had stacked at the back of the cave where he slept.
These stores, with what was still in the cache, would be useful if they had to come back to the beach.
“But what am I to carry?” asked she.
“Oh, there’s no call for you to trouble,” answered he, “you’ve got your oilskins. I reckon that’ll be enough for you to bother with. Them things in the bundle is no weight for a man.”
She tried to argue the question. It seemed to her impossible that any single person could carry that load for long, but she might just as well have argued with the gentle wind blowing now shorewards from the islands. He lifted the bundle with one great hand to demonstrate its lightness; he was also going to take the harpoon as a sort of walking stick.
It seemed to her that she had never realized hisstrength before, nor his placid determination that seemed more like an elemental force than the will of a man.
She gave in and sat down to the meal, biscuits and the remains of a stew, and as she ate she watched the great sea bulls and the cows and the young ones that now were able to land, boosting through the foam like their elders, and as she watched she wondered whether she would ever see these things again, there, against the setting of the sea and the great islands.
She had put on her boots for the journey and a pair of men’s soft woollen socks from the store in the cache. They were small men’s socks and the wool was so fine and soft that the size did not trouble her. In her pocket she still carried the few odds and ends including the tobacco box in which she had placed her rings. She wore the sou’wester, and the oilskin lay beside her folded and ready to be carried on her arm.
Then, when the meal was finished, Raft washed the plates and stored them in the cave. He stood looking at the stored things for a moment as if to make sure they would be all right, then he kicked an old tin away into a cleft of the rocks as though to tidy the place, then he took up the harpoon and slung the bundle on his shoulder.
The girl rose and looked around her. This place where she had suffered and nearly died was still warm with memories, and the sea creatures were like friends, she had grown to love them justas people love trees or familiar inanimate things.
To associate the idea of home with that desolate beach, those moving monsters, those caves, would seem absurd. Well, it was like leaving home, and as she stood looking around her a tightness came in her throat and her eyes grew misty. But Raft was moving now and she followed him, glancing back now and then until they crossed the river where she looked back for the last time. The river was almost deserted now by the young sea elephants, except at its mouth. A few little girl seals lay about, delicate or unadventurous creatures whose lives would doubtless be short in a world that is only for the strong. These little girl seals had attracted her attention before, they had almost the ways of fine ladies. It was as though some germ of civilization in the herd had become concentrated in them and she had wondered whether they would ever pull through the rough and tumble of life, recognising vaguely that nature is opposed to civilization at heart. They seemed allied to herself and their future seemed as doubtful as her own here where nothing helped, where everything opposed.
She caressed them with her eyes for the last time; then as she turned and followed Raft she forgot them. Her brave mind, that nothing could daunt but loneliness, faced the great adventure ahead not only undaunted but uplifted. The way was terrific, the chances were small, so small, so remote, that they could scarcely be called chances,and the penalty of failure was return and a winter here when the beach would be deserted by all but the gulls. The very desperation of the business made it great, and from the greatness came the uplift.
They passed the figure-head with its sphinx-like face staring over the sea, and the great skull half sanded over by the recent blow. Then they drew near the caves and the boat.
The boat had been blown over on its other side by the wind and lay with one gunnel deep buried in the sand and its keel presented to the cliffs; she glanced only once at the caves, deserted now by the birds who had no doubt picked the last fragments of the dead man.
Then they climbed the Lizard rocks and at the highest point sat down to rest for a moment.
Raft, with the bundle beside him and the harpoon held between his knees, swung his head from the great beach on his right to the broken country on his left.
He said nothing, not wishing perhaps to dishearten his companion. It was she who spoke.
“That’s the plain I told you of,” said she, “we mustn’t cross it, you can see from here some of the dangerous patches, those yellow ones, but there are others just as bad that you can’t tell till you are trapped in them. I would have gone down, only a bird flying overhead dropped a fish on the ground right in front of me and the fish disappeared.”
“We’d better get along the sea-shore rocks,seems to me,” said Raft, “the tide’s going out, all them rocks between tide marks is pretty flat.”
“Suppose the tide comes in,” said she, “and we can’t get up the cliffs?”
“Oh, we’ll have lots of time to make a good way before it comes back,” replied he, “and we’ve got to trust a bit to chance, we’ve got to strike bold. I reckon we’d better trust to instinc’.” He laughed in his beard. “The same sort of instinc’ that made that bird drop the fish to give you soundin’s of that mud hole.”
“Providence,” said she, “yes—you are right.”
“I believe in strikin’ bold,” said he, almost as though he were talking to himself. “It’s like fighting with a chap, the fellow that does the hittin’ without bothering about bein’ hit. He’s the chap. Well, if you’re restored, we’ll be gettin’ along.”
He heaved up and led the way, striking right down to the sea and pausing now and then to help her. Once he lifted her as though she were a feather from one rock to the other. Then, all of a sudden they came to a ten foot drop. There was no getting round that drop, it was a basalt step that circled the whole Lizard Point on its seaward side. It did not disconcert Raft. He threw the harpoon down, then he lowered himself, clutching the edge and let himself fall. Following his directions she threw him the bundle. It would have felled an ordinary landsman, but he caught it, placed itbeside him and then ordered her to jump, just as she stood, without lowering herself.
“Jump with your arms up,” said he, laughing, “no call to lower yourself. I’ll catch you.”
It was like an order to commit suicide. It seemed to her impossible, she thought that he only spoke in fun, then she knew that he was in earnest, that he was ordering her. But it was impossible—absolutely. Then she jumped with arms raised, jumped into two great hands that clipped her round the waist and brought her, feet to ground, with scarcely a jar.
“I didn’t think you’d have done it,” said he. “You ain’t wanting in pluck.”
“I knew it would be all right if you told me,” said she, “but I didn’t want to do it until the very last moment.”
After that she would have jumped over a cliff if he had told her. It seemed to her that he was invincible—infallible.
A climb of a couple of minutes brought them down to the tide mark rocks, the tide was a quarter out and the sea comparatively calm and the rocks flat-topped like those of the seal beach and free from seaweed except where, here and there, were piled masses of giant kelp torn up from its deep sea attachments and cast here by the waves. It lay in ridges that had to be climbed over sometimes and seemed entirely confined to the Lizard Point and the rocks beyond, for when they reached where the cliffs began it ceased to occur.
Where the cliffs began they first experienced the true meaning of a journey along that coast.
She had seen these cliffs from the boat, but that view, though forbidding enough, had told her little of the reality.
They rose from two to four hundred feet in height, these cliffs, and looking up was like looking up a wall of polished ebony.
Here and there they were streaked with long lines of white where the guillemots in their thousands sat on ledges, and here and there they were faced by seaward rocks standing out in the water and carved by the waves into all sorts of fantastic shapes, but waves and rocks and sea and sky, all these were nothing, here the cliffs were everything, dominating the mind and soul, sinister, and tinging every sound from the wave echoes to the gull voices with tragedy.
And high tide mark was the cliff base in fine weather, in foul, the waves would lash and dash and beat fifty feet up, there was not a guillemot ledge lower than eighty feet, puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes, who always build above the guillemots did not seem to come here at all, keeping to the seaward rocks and the coast line where the cliffs drew further away from the sea.
With the sea so close on the right and the cliffs on the left the girl felt like a mouse in a trap designed for an elephant. Alone she would never have dared this road, even with Raft leading her she felt timid and oppressed. The place did notseem to affect Raft. Plodding ahead as indifferently as though he were on some civilized country road, he talked to her now and then over his shoulder, calling attention to queer shaped crabs or dead kelp fish, and ever as they went their road grew broader as the tide drew out.
It was now about an hour and a half after high water, that is to say, quarter ebb; in a little more than ten hours it would be high water again, before that they must find a way from the beach or be drowned. Raft knew this and the girl knew it too. It seemed almost impossible that, with so much time before them, they could not find a break in the cliffs towards safe ground, yet the cliffs seemed to stretch endlessly before them and their pace was slow, not more than three miles an hour. They rested sometimes for a moment watching the out-going sea and the gulls; unused to exercise the girl was tired, and the man knew it. Alone he could have travelled swiftly and without resting, but he said nothing, and though he knew the necessity of speed, it was he who made the halts for the sake of his companion. Three hours after noon he took some food out of the bundle and made her eat. They had already drunk from a little torrent rushing out of a crack in the cliff wall, but even so the food seemed dry and she could scarcely swallow it. Anxiety had her in its grip, the cliffs stretching on and on interminably seemed like misfortune itself made visible.
Said Raft: “The tide’s near the turn and themcliffs don’t shew no sign of a cut in them, but then there’s only two miles or so to be seen from here. Round that bend there’s no knowing, they may break away beyond there. What I’m thinkin’ is this. We’ve time to get back along the road we’ve come by before it’s high water again.”
“Go back?”
“We’ve time to do it; if we keep on our course it will take us maybe near an hour to get to that shoulder and from there we won’t have much time to get back before high water again. We’ve cut it too fine and if the tide comes back and catches us before we get to a break we’re done.”
She looked forward then she looked back. They were in a veritable corridor. The sea formed the right hand wall of this corridor, the cliffs varying from two hundred to three hundred feet high formed the left hand wall, cliffs black as ebony, polished by sea washing, unclimbable and tremendous as a dream of Dante.
She saw their full position. There was time to get back from where they stood, but if they went on to the cape of cliff before them there would be no time to get back, they would have to go on, and the unseen cliffs beyond that cape might stretch for twenty miles unclimbable as here.
Yet the idea of going back was horrible, heartbreaking.
She saw that Raft was between two moods. Then she said to him.
“If you were alone would you go back or go on?”
“Me?” said Raft. He paused for a moment as if in thought—“Oh, I reckon I’d go on.”
“Then we will go on.”
“I was thinkin’ of you,” said he.
“I know—but I could not bear to go back. If we fail now like that we will fail altogether. Imagine going all that way back. No, I couldn’t. We must risk it.”
“I’m thinking that way,” said he.
He picked up the bundle and harpoon and they started, and no sooner had she taken the first step than Fear laid his hand on her heart and a wild craving to return seized her so that she could have cried out.
She had once said that she feared an ugly face more than a blow, and the fear that seized her now was less the fear of death than the fear of the cliffs and their conspiracy with the murmuring sea that would soon be an inclosing wall.
She fought it down.
The cliff shoulder was further away than they thought; it took them an hour to reach it and, when they turned it, there, before them lay cliffs higher, more monstrous and running in a curve to another shoulder seven miles away, if a yard. But towards the middle of the curve the cliff face seemed ridged and broken near the base. Raft shading his eyes, pointed out this broken surface.
“It looks as if there was foothold there beyond tide mark,” said he, “we’ve got to go on anyhow—Lord, but you’re tired!”
He made her sit down. The sight of that gargantuan sweep of cliff coming on top of the weariness of the journey had crushed her. To go forward seemed impossible, to fight against that immensity impossible. She could have wept but she had neither tears nor energy. The gods seemed to have built those bastions to shut out all hope and the voice of the returning sea seemed like a tide turning over her broken thoughts like pebbles.
Raft standing over her like a tower said not a word.
Mixed with the voice of the sea came the voices of the gulls and all sorts of sea echoes from the cliffs.
Then as she sat she made a supreme effort of mind. She must rise and go on. She struggled to rise, but her limbs had left her, deserted her, stricken as if by paralysis.
Raft took off his cap and put it in his pocket, then he went to the cliff side and rested the harpoon against it, standing up. She watched him, vaguely wondering what he was about, then he returned to her and bent down and she found herself lifted suddenly and seated on his left shoulder.
“Hold on to my hair,” cried he. Then he bent and picked up the bundle, went to the cliff side and picked up the harpoon and started. The giant strength that had caught her when she jumped from the Lizard Point ledge was carrying her now like a feather, the crook of his left arm round her legs to steady her, the harpoon clutchedin his left hand, the bundle swung over his right shoulder.
And she held on to his hair as a child might, without a word, and as she held the strength of him seemed to permeate her through her fingers casting fear and misery out.
She felt as a tiny tired child feels when caught up and carried by its mother, and carrying her so he strode on, cursing himself for not having carried her before.
It was a three-mile journey to that roughness on the cliff and as he drew near he saw that they were saved, at least for the time.
The rock broke here in ledges like steps and twenty feet up and well beyond tide mark ran a little plateau some ten or twelve feet broad.
She saw it as well as he and filled with new strength she cried out to be set down.
“Stay easy,” said Raft. “It’s easier to carry the bundle with you on my shoulder, you ain’t no weight.”
Then when he reached the steps:
“Done it b’God,” said he.
He dropped the bundle and harpoon, and, lifting her, set her feet on the basalt steps.
“Can you climb it?” asked he.
Without a word she climbed and sitting on the little plateau looked down on him.
Then he followed with the things and took his seat beside her. They sat for a while without a word, the bare rocks and the grey sea before them.
A great rock out at sea, pierced and arched like the frame work of a door, shewed through its opening the sea beyond. Gulls flew round it and their eternal complaint came on the wind blowing, still lightly, from the north.
Raft seemed absorbed in thought.
Then he said: “It won’t be high water until gettin’ on for dark. We’d better stick here the night anyhow and get the low tide to-morrow. But there’s time for me now to get to that next shoulder and see what’s beyond, it’s a matter of four miles there maybe and four miles back.”
“I’ll go with you,” said she, “I’m stronger now.”
“No, you stick here,” said he. “There’s no call for two to go. You’ll want your strength for the morning.”
“Only for you I wouldn’t be here,” said she.
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t,” said Raft. “It’s as well I was along with you, but you ain’t no weight—no more than a kitten. I never thought you were as bad as that or I’d have lifted you miles back.”
“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.
“Me—oh, no, not more than a bit stiff in the arm.” He stretched his left arm out. Then he looked at the bundle.
“You don’t want nothing to eat just yet?” asked he.
“Not till you come back,” she answered. “I’ll watch you from here.”
He scrambled down, picked up the harpoonwhich he had left on the rocks and then looked up and nodded to her.
“I’ll keep in sight,” said he. Then he started.
She watched his great figure as it went, harpoon in hand, growing smaller and smaller, till, now, she could have covered it with her thumb nail. As the distance increased it seemed to go slower and the great black cliffs to grow higher.
At a dizzy height above her cormorants had their nests, they seemed angry about something as they clanged and flew, shooting out into the sky and wheeling back again in an aimless manner. Before her the grey sea crawled, coming, now, steadily shoreward.
The tide seemed coming in faster than usual. She knew that this could not be so and that Raft was too wise to allow himself to be cut off, all the same a smouldering anxiety fed on her heart as she watched the tiny figure now approaching the out-jutting shoulder of cliff. Then it disappeared.
He had promised to keep in sight.
Evidently that was impossible if he wanted to get a view of what lay beyond.
A minute passed, two, three—then the figure reappeared and her heart that had lain still sprang to life again.
As he drew closer she saw him stoop and pick up something, then he came right up to the cliff face, paused a minute and continued his way towards her, walking more slowly now and carrying the thing in his hands.
It was a big shell shaped like an abalone. He had filled it with water from a little torrent running from the cliff and when he reached her he held it up to show.
“We’re all right,” cried he, “there’s only four or five miles of cliff beyond the point, then it breaks away down to the beach. We’ll be able to get clear of this to-morrow.”
She came down the basalt steps and took the shell from him. He had washed it in the torrent so that the water had no taint of salt. Then, carrying it carefully she got it to the plateau where he followed her.
CHAPTER XXVIIINIGHT
Towards dark the incoming tide began to hit the cliff base. Raft had taken the things from the bundle and had made her wrap herself in the blanket. “You ain’t used to the weather like me,” said he, “and this is nothing to bother about. Lucky it’s not blowing. Lucky we made this shelf. Hark at that!”
The first full blow of a wave hit the basalt below them with a heart-sickening thud; then miles of stricken cliff began to boom. The terrific corridor was no more, and between them and the Lizard point so many miles away to the east and the point of safety miles away to the west, there was nothing but cliff washed by sea.
“A rotten coast,” said Raft as they listened. “Only for this shelf we’d be down there.”
“We’d have been flung against the cliff and beaten to pieces,” said she.
“That’s so,” said Raft.
“When we get free from this,” she said, “let us keep inland. I don’t mind climbing over rocks, anything is better than the coast, under these cliffs.”
“We’ve got to keep pretty close to the cliffs,all the same, to strike that bay,” he replied, “hope it’s there.”
“It is there,” said she. “I feel—I know it is there and that we will find a ship. We are being looked after.”
“Which way?”
“We are being led. You remember when you saved me from dying in that cave, well, you were making for the bay then. If you had not found me you would have kept on and you would have crossed that plain where the bog places are, it looked the easiest way.”
“That’s so,” said Raft.
“Bompard was swallowed up there. You would have been swallowed up too; you were led to find me for both our sakes. Then, to-day, I could have gone no further only for you, and you remember how we thought of going back? This ledge was here waiting for us. It tells us we have to go on and be brave and everything will come right.”
“Well, maybe, you aren’t far wrong,” replied the other, “we’ve scraped through so far and maybe we’ll scrape through to the end. My main wish is to have a plank under foot again, there ain’t no give and take in land, I’m never surefooted on land, there’s no lift in it. I reckon I’m like one of them sea chickens not used to solid stuff underfoot. D’you know what one of them gulls does first thing he lands on board a ship by chance?”
“No.”
“He gets sick as a dog.”
The cliff had an echo which, when it was not answering some loud boost of the sea managed to return words, and between the smack of two waves the girl heard it remark something about a dog. But the echo of the cliff soon had its mouth too full to hold words. The sea now nearly at full flood was bringing big waves along with it. In the gloom they could see the racing grey ghosts, and here, on account of the curve, there was little rhythm in the sound of it that came like the continuous thunder of big drums. At their feet, like the licking vicious tongue of the roaring monster, came the continuous gash-gash of waves washing up and falling back.
The girl sat with the blanket around her leaning close up against the man. She felt as a person feels standing before the cage of a tiger uncertain as to the strength of the bars, sometimes a puff of wind brought a touch of spray on her face, whilst the continuous muffled thunder of the coast leagues seemed like the bastions of the whole world at war with the sea.
“There’s no call to be afraid,” said Raft. He seemed, by some special faculty, to be able to divine her feelings.
“I’m not exactly afraid,” she replied. “It’s just that everything seems so big—and those cliffs, now, even when they are hidden, they make one know they are there, they seem wicked and alive, yet not able to move.”
“You’ve hit it,” said he, “they’re for all the world as if they were looking at a chap. It’s a rotten coast, but it’s near high water now and the tide will soon be drawing out.”
This cheered her.
Then the whale birds began to cry and flit about. The whale birds are blind by daylight and their voices scarcely ever heard, they are the owls of the sea.
The girl talked about them for something to say, then she fell to wondering why on a beach like this there were no sea elephants. Raft explained “sea cows” would never come to a washed beach like this, there were no dry rocks for them to “hang about” on.
He had lit his pipe with the tinder box and the smell of the tobacco came good and comforting, the slap and dash of the waves sounded less vicious, too, as though the sea had done its worst to get at them and was foiled.
Then she said, apropos of nothing but the last of her wandering thoughts: “Have you ever seen a man killed?”
He laughed as though over some pleasant reminiscence. “Dozens.” Then he began to recall chaps he had seen killed, falling from aloft and otherwise. He had seen one hit the sea such a smack it split him open, and he had seen a chap under water being pulled to pieces by sharks just as terriers pull an old shoe.
Then he wandered off to a bar scene where adago—it was at Nagasaki—had been drinking rice rum and knifed a man, a regular prosy old sailor’s yarn, with “I says to him,” and “he says to me” at every turn.
Then he found that she was leaning more heavily against him and was asleep. He put his pipe beside him and slipped an arm round her. Then, as though sleep were infectious, down he sank still holding her and there they lay. He snoring gently and she with her head pillowed on his chest.
CHAPTER XXIXTHE SUMMIT
“I will break thee.” Across Kerguelen those words are written to be read by the soul of man. The rock, the rain, the wind and the sea, these, as instruments, would surely be sufficient for the carrying out of the threat; but the soul of man is strong, hence the spirit of Kerguelen has called to its assistance Fog.
Since landing on the great beach the girl had seen the islands fog-wreathed several times but the beach itself had only once been attacked.
When she awoke on the rock plateau the first word of Raft to her was “fog.”
They had slept as the dead sleep for nine hours and Raft had awoken with the girl’s head still on his chest and feeling as though he were packed in damp cotton wool. It was after sun up and the fog was so dense that the edge of the plateau was only just visible. Through the fog came the breaking of the waves; the tide was coming in again.
Raft had lit his pipe and the girl, stiff from lying, rose up and stamped about to warm herself. Neither of them spoke a word in the way of grumbling.
The plateau was about twenty yards in lengthand by drawing off five yards or so one could have a dressing-room screened with a fog veil, so the fog was not an unmixed evil.
Then they breakfasted, listening to the slashing of the water just below and counting the time till the out-going sea would let them loose.
“It’s a good job I went to the point last night,” said Raft, “else we wouldn’t be able to start in this smother, not knowing what was beyond there.”
“Will we be able to start in this?” she asked.
“Lord, yes,” replied he, “the cliffs will give us a lead, it’ll be slow going but we’ll do it all right, it’s not more than six miles or so to the break from the point there.”
“When can we start?”
Raft listened to the water below, it was breaking now against the near rocks but not yet against the cliff base.
“In another three hours or maybe a bit more,” said he.
An hour later, as though the Fog spirit had been listening and watching, and as though it despaired of its attack on the heart of the prisoners, the smother began to thin; by the time the tide reluctantly began to free them it had broken up and patches of the blessed blue sky shewed overhead.
By the time they reached the point and had a view of the great cliff break-down that would give them release it was fine weather, with a gently heaving sea breaking in beneath a sky of summer.
It was as though their troubles were ended. Atnoon they reached the great break-down and a new form of country.
Stretching inland almost to the foothills lay a broad valley, boulder strewn, and looking like the bed of some vanished river. Before them to the west the ground rose from the valley, gently, unbroken, desolate, like nothing so much as the desolate country that borders the Riff coast of Morocco. But it was ease itself compared to the tumble of rocks around and beyond the Lizard Point.
Down the middle of the valley came a little wimpling rivulet like the remains of the river that had once been. They drank from it and rested and had some food, then they started with light hearts, taking the easy ascent to the high ground, treading a moss dark and springy like the moss that covers the old lava beds of Iceland.
“Look!” said the girl.
They had reached the highest point and before them, away to the west, stretched the same rolling dark-smooth country, making low cliffs at the sea edge and then, as if weary of little things, springing gigantic and bold towards the sky.
“It’s over there the bay would be,” said Raft. “Ponting said it was a black brute of a bay between two cliffs rising higher than a ship’s top masts. Well, there’s our chance before us—if you call it a chance. It’s a long way, taking it how you will.”
Chance! Despite her optimism and belief in being led, as she stood now with the wind blowingin her face it seemed to her that she stood before absolute hopelessness.
Nothing, not even the sea corridor, had balked her like that terrible distance, calm, sunlit, yet gloomy like a recumbent giant.
The monstrosity of the whole adventure unmasked itself of a sudden; travelling to find a bay they had heard of on the chance of finding a ship—a ship on a coast where ships were scarcely to be found.
And even if they found the bay they could not wait for a ship. Here there was no food, with the exception of rabbits and gulls. The ship would have to be there, waiting for them.
Raft must have been mad! mad! mad! She herself must have been mad to dream of such a thing.
Her lips felt dry as pumice stone and she glanced at her companion as he stood with the bundle at his feet and the harpoon in his hand, looking about him, far and near, as unconcerned as though beyond that great hump on the skyline lay a sure town with a railway station.
No, Raft was not mad. He was unconcerned. He knew, even better than she, the hopelessness of their position, yet he was calm and unmoved, never from the first moment she had seen him had he been otherwise; before everything, like a rock, he continued.
Yet it was only now, as he quietly stood there surveying their “chance,” that he came home toher truly as he was, unbreakable; simple, vast, forged by the sea. She swallowed down the devil of doubt and despair as she stood looking at him standing so, and she was about to speak when, catching sight of something along the high ground to the right he pointed it out to her. She saw a white point on the ground a couple of hundred yards away.
As they drew close to it it enlarged and other things shewed. It was the top of a skull belonging to a skeleton tucked away in a little hollow as though it were sheltering from the wind.
Rags of clothing still hung to it and the boots were there still that had once belonged to it.
“Wonder what did that poor chap in?” said Raft as he stood looking at it. “Wrecked, most likely and lost himself—well, it’s a sign folk have been here, anyhow.”
He gauged the measure of the desolation around by his words. Here a skeleton did not make the desolation more desolate; on the contrary, it proved that folk had been here.
So the girl felt.
“He’d have been blown away by this only for that hollow he’s in,” said Raft, “well, he’s out of his troubles whoever he was and whatever ship he hailed from.”
“We can’t bury him,” said she.
“He’s buried,” said Raft.
He had summed up Kerguelen in two words and there was almost a trace of bitterness in his voice.Beyond the remark that it was a brute of a coast he had never grumbled against the place or abused it or the Almighty for making it, as many a man has done; and now at the summit of things two words sufficed him.
Then, leaving the skeleton to the wind and the sky and the countless ages, they turned and went on their way west.