"What has become of Bompard?" she asked. "Have you seen him since he went off this morning over those rocks?"
"Bompard," replied the other, "Mon Dieu! How do I know? No, I have not seen him, he is big enough to take care of himself."
"That may be," she replied, "but accidents happen no matter how big a man may be. He has not returned--"
"So it would seem," said La Touche, who had now got the tin open and was turning the contents on to a plate. "But he will return when he remembers that it is dinner-time."
Her lips were dry with anger, there was a contained insolence in the manner and voice of the other that roused her as much as his callousness. His mind seemed as cold as his pale blue eyes. All her mixed feelings towards him focussed suddenly into a point--she loathed him; but she held herself in.
"If he has not returned when we have finished dinner," said she, "we will have to look for him." She took a plate and some of the beef he had turned from the tin and with a couple of biscuits drew off and taking her place outside in the sun began her wretched meal. A rabbit that had run out on the sands sat up and looked at her as she ate, then it ran off and as she followed it with her eyes she contrasted the little friendly form with the form of La Touche, the dark innocent eyes with those eyes of washed-out blue, without depth, or, perhaps, veiling depth.
When she had finished eating she put the plate by her side and sat waiting for La Touche to make a movement.
Bompard that morning had left his tinder box behind him in the cave, she heard the strike of flint on steel. La Touche was lighting his pipe. She waited ten minutes or more, then she came to the cave mouth.
"Are you not coming to look for Bompard?" asked she.
"I"ll go when I choose," said he, "I don"t want orders."
"I gave you no orders," she replied, "I asked you, are you not coming to look for Bompard who may be in difficulties, or lying perhaps with a broken limb--and you sit there smoking your pipe. But I give you orders now; get up and come and help to look for him. Get up at once."
He sprang to his feet and came right out. It seemed to her that she had never seen him before. This was the real La Touche.
"One word more from you," he shouted, "and I"ll show you who"s master.
You! Talk to me, would you! A--woman more trouble than you"re worth. Off with you, get down the beach--clear!"
He took a step forward with his right fist ready to strike, open-handed. Then he drew back. She had whipped the knife from its sheath.
The boat hook, which she had brought back with her, was propped against the cliff behind her and out of his reach, he had no weapon.
She did not add a word to the threat of the knife. He stood like a fool, unable to sustain her gaze, venomous, yet held, as a snake is held by a man"s grip.
"Now," she said, "get on. Go search for your companion and if you dare to speak to me again like that I will make you repent it. You thought I was weak being a woman and alone. You were going to strike. Coward!--Get on, go and search for your companion."
He turned suddenly and walked off towards the Lizard rocks. "I"ll go where I choose," said he.
It was a lame and impotent end of his rebellion, but she held no delusions. This was only the beginning--if Bompard did not return.
She put the knife in its sheath and then she put the boat hook away, hiding it behind the sailcloth in her cave, then she went into the men"s cave. La Touche"s clasp knife lay there on the sand, it was not much of a weapon but she took it. She examined the dinner knives again.
They were almost useless as weapons. Then she came out. La Touche had disappeared beyond the rocks and she came to the boat. There was nothing here in the way of a weapon that he might use, unless the oars. They were heavy, but he was strong. She determined to leave nothing to chance and, carrying the oars down the beach to the break in the cliffs, she hid them amongst some scrub bushes. Then she remembered the axe, sought for it and hid it.
Then she came back and sat down to reconsider matters.
The position was as bad as could be.
As bad as La Touche. Once let this man get the upper hand and she was lost. She would be his slave and worse. She had measured him finely.
Instinct, never at fault, told her that to pull down anything above him would be meat and drink to La Touche"s true nature and that his hatred of her superiority was deepened by the fact that she was a woman.
Were she weak he would beat her and make her cook for him, trample on her, make her his woman to fetch and carry, and, if Bompard did not come back, she was here alone with him and would have to fight this thing out.
Well, she could not fight it by brooding over it, and she was not helping to look for Bompard.
She drew the knife from its sheath and held the eight inches of razor sharp steel balanced in her hand for a moment as though admiring it.
Then she replaced it in the sheath and started towards the Lizard Point.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DEATH TRAPS
From the highest shoulder of the point she could see La Touche clambering over the seaward rocks.
He seemed more in search of sh.e.l.ls and seaweed than of Bompard. Then, climbing down, she reached the lower ground and struck off inland. If she did not succeed in finding Bompard she would at least succeed in avoiding La Touche.
Right from the Lizard Point the plain stretched to higher ground which marked the beginning of the sea cliffs, great rocks strewed the way and the ground was torn by the beds of small water courses, depressions that would suddenly become little rivers in the deluging rains; stunted bushes huddled as if for shelter at the rock bases and the voice of the sea came here, broken and mixing with the whisper of the bushes to the wind.
This place had once been a glacier bed, rounded boulders standing in pools of water told that.
A gull flying in from the sea and carrying a fish in its beak drew her attention; it was being pursued by a larger gull. They were both of the Burgomaster type, but the fish carrier was noticeable on account of the intense blackness of its tail plumage.
As they pa.s.sed the fish dropped, fell on a patch of yellow ground just in front of the girl, sank, and vanished.
She stopped dead and drew back with a chill at her heart. Then she picked up a stone and cast it on the patch of ground. It vanished even more swiftly than the fish.
It was one of the bogs the men had spoken of. They had described the treacherous ground as white, this was yellowish and not very noticeable, it was also death and another dozen steps would have led her into it.
She advanced cautiously, reached the border line and kneeling down pushed her hand into the yellow mud. It was like pushing it into a cold slimy mouth. She could scarcely draw it out again, when she did the mud was clinging to her hand like a yellow glove.
She came back to one of the rock ponds and washed her hand, it was like trying to get rid of treacle and, as she washed, she tried to fancy what would have happened but for the gull, tried to picture herself being slowly pulled down into that cold darkness and entombed there forever.
Then, skirting the place of danger, she went on, cautiously, examining carefully the ground before her. She had not gone ten yards when it seemed to her that a patch right in front of her was ever so slightly darker and moister looking than the ground she was treading.
She picked up a stone and cast it on the patch. It vanished. Then she knew the feeling of the man who finds himself ambuscaded.
This place was a death trap, or, rather, a series of death traps, there might be pits lying in wait for her quite unnoticeable. She turned and began to retrace her steps, so shaken that she would not trust even the ground that she had already covered but kept testing it by casting stones before her.
From a little distance an observer might have fancied her engaged in some new sort of game.
Near the safety of the Lizard rocks her eyes, closely scanning the ground before her, caught sight of something. It was a half-burned match. No one else but Bompard could have dropped that match. He had started without his tinder-box, had evidently found that match in his pocket, lit his pipe and walked on. There was only one direction in which he would have walked unless he had struck inland, which was improbable. He would have made as she had made to cross to the higher ground.
Even if he had walked inland he would not have escaped, for, casting her eyes in that direction she could see yellow patches spreading between the rocks.
She knew now what had become of Bompard, and with lips dry as pumice stone she began to climb till she reached the point where she had sat that morning. If the mud had taken Bompard, had he cried out? If so, La Touche would have heard his cries, for the caves were not so far from the Lizard rocks.
La Touche was nowhere to be seen, but she had no fear about him, or only the fear that he would come back. Bompard was gone. Bompard was dead, she knew it as though she had seen him engulfed, and she was here alone, in this place, with La Touche.