She put her hand to her side automatically to make sure that the knife was there. Then she sat with her eyes fixed on the distant islands, haze-purple in the light of the westering sun.
The thought of the boat on the beach came to her with the idea that she might launch it and escape, make for the islands and put all that sea between herself and the man she hated. But she could not launch the boat single-handed and, if she could, it would have been impossible to work it single-handed with those big oars.
She could see the boat from where she sat and the line of the beach leading away past the seal-nursery and the sea elephant strand to the rocks that formed the north-eastern horn of the bay. In stormy weather those rocks would be invisible in the smoke of the breakers, to-day they were clearly defined. She could see the great seals as they moved slowly hither and thither and the ship"s figure-head as it stood to this side of them and, like a pin point of white the great white skull on the sands, a desolate scene, but almost benign when compared to the savagery of rocks and cliffs visible on her other side and that sinister plain, where the death traps were set and waiting with the patience of malignity for what might come to feed them.
She had fought the human failing that makes men brood and trouble about the future, a failing that is mostly born of houses and artificial life; already the struggle against it was less. She was coming more and more under that which has dominion over all things that live in the open and have to fight for life--the moment. If she had examined her own mind she would have found that the death of Bompard, of which she felt certain, affected her far less than it would have done some days ago, that her desire to escape to the islands was caused by the hatred of La Touche more than by fear of the future with him.
She would have found that her capacity for hatred had increased and also her dangerous qualities, and she would have found all this because G.o.d had so ordered life that it is adaptable, making the defensive and offensive qualities of the being capable of increase or decrease in answer to environment or need.
She came back to the beach. It wanted, still, a couple of hours of sun-down. There was no sign yet of La Touche, but, just as she knew in her heart that Bompard was dead she knew that La Touche was all right.
He had been keeping to the rocks by the sea, leaving that aside; she knew that he would come back. He was of the sort that remains unscathed when the better man is taken.
She had one dread; that La Touche might get the knife from her, throw it away, and be master by his superior strength.
She had his clasp knife in her pocket, but it was a thing of little account in a struggle. Well, she must be on her guard. Then came the thought: "But how can I be on my guard when I am asleep?"
Nothing would be easier, if he were really in earnest, than for him to creep upon her whilst she slept, and disarm her.
She tried to dismiss this idea. La Touche was not crafty enough for that and, besides, would he go to the lengths of a physical struggle? He had been on the point of hitting her, it was true, but that was in a moment of excitement. Was she not painting him in too desperate colours?
Argue as she would on the question, reason, instinctive reason, always came back with the same answer: "Be on your guard, that knife is the only barrier between you and heaven knows what. Without it you would be at the mercy of a superior force. La Touche is no melodramatic villain; he is, what is perhaps worse for you, a creature of low instincts, stronger than you. Beware of being at his mercy."
With her mind filled by these thoughts she set to work getting supper ready. La Touche had taken the tinder box with him, so a fire was out of the question and she contented herself by laying out the beef that had served for dinner, and some biscuits.
Then she saw that she had only laid two plates. Working half-unconsciously she had ruled Bompard out. She looked at the things lying there on the sand, then she turned away from them. La Touche had crossed the rocks and was coming along the beach. He was trailing a long ribband of seaweed he had picked up and as he drew closer she saw that he had left his ill-humor behind him.
"There was no sight of Bompard," said he, "he has not come back, then?"
"Bompard will not come back," replied the girl, "we will never see him again."
Then she told of the death traps beyond the rocks and of the match.
La Touche listened, standing, and still holding the ribband of seaweed in his fingers.
She could see that he believed what she said and yet his words gave the lie to what was in his face.
"Oh, Bompard will come back all right," said he. "He"s not such a fool as to get into any of those bogs; he"s sulking, that"s all."
He shaded his eyes, looking back towards the rocks as though on the chance of seeing the missing one; then he sat down before his plate and helped himself to food and the girl, loathing him and the food as well, sat down and made a pretence of eating.
She noticed that he was cheerful, for a wonder. He ate with good appet.i.te and shewed in his movements and manner and voice when he spoke a restrained vivacity new to him.
His blondness, the washed-out blue of his eyes, his features, his voice, she considered all these anew as she sat opposite to him. It seemed to her that anything truly manly about him had come from the sea; that essentially he was a product of Mont Martre or the Banlieu of old Paris.
She loathed him now as only a woman can loathe a man and, woman-like, her loathing focussed itself upon his blondness and the colour of his eyes.
Then, when she had done with the pretence of eating she rose up and, leaving him to remove the things, walked down to the water"s edge and along towards the break in the cliffs.
The tide was nearly out and the sea scarcely broke on the rocks; she had never seen it calmer nor the islands closer. They seemed to have drawn in sh.o.r.e during the last half hour and as she looked she saw a great flock of gulls coming landward, and, as she turned to watch them, she noticed the far-off mountain tops visible through the cliff break. They were fuming. One might have fancied that fires had been lit all along their tops and round the highest peak a turban of cloud was winding itself, coil on coil.
Then as she stood watching, and from away over, there came a rumble, deep and cavernous, as if a gargantuan dray were being driven over subterranean roads. It died out in echoes amongst the foothills and the silence returned broken only by the wash of the sea on the beach.
She turned towards the sea. It had altered suddenly in colour and from away beyond the islands the wind was coming. She could see it, raking the sea like a comb. Then it struck the beach and yelled away up the break in the cliffs like a hunter in a hurry to get to the wild work going on amidst the hills.
She turned back towards the caves.
La Touche had left the tin plates lying on the sand and the wind, which seemed to possess a hundred fingers, was chasing them about. He was trying to recapture them and as he brought them back he laughed. It was the first time she had seen him laugh. Then as he stowed them away he shewed a disposition towards intimacy and talkativeness.
"That"s what the winds are in this place," said he, "no wonder ships steer clear of it."
"I"m not thinking of the wind," said she, "I"m thinking of Bompard."
"Oh, Bompard will come back all right," said he, "the grub"s here and that will bring him. Bompard will come back all right."
"No," said she, "he will never come back and you know it."
She turned away from him. Dusk was now falling and as she entered her cave the wind from the sea suddenly fell dead. Almost immediately it began to blow again, but now from the land and as though this land wind were spreading a pall over the sky darkness fell suddenly and with the darkness she could hear the rain coming with the sound she had heard once before like the murmuring of a great top spun by a giant.
Then the rain burst on the beach with a roar through which came the hiss of the rain-swept sea.
The sound was almost welcome. As she lay in the darkness it seemed like a protecting wall between herself and La Touche. La Touche"s ill-temper would have disturbed her less than his cheerfulness and amiability, born so suddenly and from no apparent reasons. She had determined not to sleep and she had lain down fully dressed; even to the oilskin coat and with her boots on; to-morrow she would go off and hide amongst the bushes beyond the cliff break and get some sleep, but to-night she would not close her eyes; so she told herself.
She had taken the knife from its sheath and placed it beside her, her hand rested on it. An hour pa.s.sed, and now, as she lay listening to the pouring of the rain her fingers felt the pattern of the hilt. The hilt was striated cross-ways to give a better grip, and as her fingers wandered up and down the strictions the cross bars of a ladder were suggested to her. The steady pouring of the rain seemed to work on this idea and make it more real. Then she was climbing a ladder set against the cliffs. La Touche was holding it at the foot and Bompard was waiting for her at the cliff top. He helped her up and then the dream changed to something else, and to something else, till she woke suddenly to the recognition that she had been asleep for a long time and that fear, deadly fear, was clutching her by the throat.
She sat up, leaning on her elbow. The rain was still falling, though the sound of it was much less, and the blackness was so intense that it seemed moulded round her. She felt for the knife and found it. Then she lay down again, listening.
The tide was coming in and she recognised, and not for the first time, a curious singing, chanting echo that always accompanied the waves of the incoming tide.
Fear is reasonless, it is also Protean, and this sea voice coming through the night turned the fear of La Touche to the fear of Bompard.
What if he were to return, cold and wet, from that terrible grave-yard beyond the rocks?
CHAPTER XV
THE STROKE
As she lay, listening, through the black darkness and the singing of the sea came a faint sound as of something dragging itself along the sand at the cave entrance. She clutched the knife and sat up. A waft of wind brought with it a tang of stale tobacco and rain-wet clothes. It was La Touche.
She drew up her feet and sat crouched against the sailcloth, the knife half-held in her lap, her fingers nerveless, her mind paralysed with the knowledge that now, immediately, she would _have_ to fight, that the Beast was all but upon her. She knew.
She could hear him breathing now and the faint sound of his hands feeling gently over the floor of the cave. He was searching for her, the fume of him filled the place, he was almost in touch with her, yet still she sat helpless as a little child, paralysed in the blackness, as a bird before a crawling cat. Yet her right hand as though endowed with a volition of its own was tightening its grasp upon the hilt of the knife.
She had no longer reasoning power. Reasoning power and energy seemed now in the possession of the knife.
Then something touched her left boot and at the touch her hand struck out into the darkness, blindly and furiously, driving the knife home to the hilt in something that fell with a choking sound across her feet.
She forced her feet from the thing that had suddenly fallen on them, rose, sprang across it and pa.s.sed through the cave entrance with the surety of a person moving in broad daylight.