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.
CHAPTER x.x.x
THE BAY
It took them till dusk to reach the foot of the western rise of ground; here they slept under a rock, continuing their way next morning, climbing till they reached the summit of the rise and keeping their course along the edge of a cliff that fell a sheer three hundred feet to the sh.o.r.e below.
Sometimes Raft peeped over the cliff edge and once the girl drew close and looked, too, dizzy with the height, made more dreadful by the gulls flying far below.
At noon, far ahead of them, they saw something that made them pause; a little mound. As they drew closer they knew. It was another cache, a cache made of heaped earth and loose stones with about a foot of sign post protruding from it. The post had been broken off in some storm and blown away.
"There"ll be stuff under there," said Raft, "and if we have to go back it"ll come in handy. It"s a pointer to the bay anyhow; there must be some landin" place near here, we"ve only got to keep on."
They sat down and rested and had some food, eating as much as they wanted now that they had a store to depend on. They had drunk twice that morning from pot holes still half-filled with the rain of a few days ago and they had no need of water--it is the one thing a man never needs in Kerguelen. They were in good spirits; the haunting fear that their provisions might not be enough to last them for the return journey was gone; also, if the bay were near, they could remain now some time, even take up their quarters here to wait on the chance of a ship.
The idea came to them to make a burrow into the cache, now, working with the harpoon and their hands, and for the purpose of verifying the contents; but they put it away, the desire to get on drove them like a whip and they went on, halting towards dusk and sleeping in a hollow that gave them shelter from the wind that was blowing from the south.
Towards dawn the wind changed to the west and at the first rays of light Raft awoke, sat up and sniffed. Then he laid his hand on the girl"s shoulder.
"Smell that!" cried he.
She sat up, her eyes half-blind with sleep.
"Smell the wind!" said Raft.
She turned her face to the west. On the wind was coming the ghost of a smell, faint and horrible and soul-searching.
"That"s a ship," said Raft.
"A ship!"
"Boiling down blubber. I struck that smell once, seven years ago; it"s blubber. I reckon we"re all right." He heaved himself on to his feet and the girl half-rose, kneeling, and looked at him.
"Are you sure?"
"Sure as sure; smell it."
Then, as she sniffed again, she knew. That was not a nature smell; horrible though it was it was not the tragic smell of corruption. It had something, almost one might say, low down about it, little, mean, business-like--it was her first sniff of returning Civilization, the first impression on an olfactory sense cleared and cleaned by the winds of Kerguelen.
She looked at Raft. He was standing, shading his eyes as though staring at the smell. The dawn was at his back, and across the dawn a flight of wild duck was making in from the sea.
Imagine a person walking in a garret from absolute penury to find himself a millionaire. Such a person, were he normal, would feel what the girl felt as the message of that noxious odour struck home to her mind.
Her teeth chattered a little as she rose to her feet. She could not speak and she had to hold her lower jaw with her hand to still it. Then the muscles of her throat did all sorts of queer things on their own account and a violent feeling of sickness seized her that would have ended in an attack of vomiting had it not pa.s.sed as quickly as it came.
Raft, who had ceased staring to the west, saw how she was taken and put his hand on her shoulder.
"You"ll be all right in a bit," said he, "it comes hard at first. I"ve seen chaps go clean off their heads sniffin" land after three months of h.e.l.l and weather. We"ll start in a bit, there"s no call to hurry, and I"ll just take a walk to get the stiffness out of my legs."
Off he went, away and away, disappearing beyond a dip in the ground.
She knew that he would be away at least half an hour. Thoughtful as a mother for her comfort, yet almost as outspoken, sometimes, as a nurse, he was wonderful.
The dawn broke broader and stronger, peaceful and grey, promising a continuance of the fine weather that had now lasted for three days, three days without wind or rain or threat from the mountains that sat this morning far away and clear cut against the sky.
Then as they went on their way the sun broke over the edge of the high lands and gulls rising above the cliff edge flitted like birds born of snow and fire.
They stopped for ten minutes to breakfast, then they went on, and now suddenly came something new. On the wind they could hear the sound of gulls quarrelling, a sound quite distinct from the ordinary mewing and wheezing of the gulls at peace.
"We"re near there," said Raft. "Hark at the gulls, they"re fighting over the sc.r.a.ps. Them chaps, whoever they are, have been killing seals and boiling the blubber. The bay"s there."
He pointed to a higher rise in the ground just before them and to the fact that the land from there sloped down inland at a terrific rate.
He was right.
Ten minutes walking brought them to the end of their journey and to the edge of a cliff two hundred feet high. It was as though a giant had taken a gouge and cut a bay right through the sea cliffs. Far across the water of the bay before them the land rose again in a precipice steep as the one on whose edge they stood.
The ripples of the bay washed in on a beach of black pebbles easily reached by the declivity of the land and on the beach, stewing like witches" cauldrons, queer looking try-pots were sending up their smoke.
Near the pots carcases of sea-bulls lay ripped and gory and being cleared of their blubber by small men, strange-looking, stripped to the waist and with arms and chests splashed by blood.
But the clove in this devil"s mixture was the ship moored in the cliff shadows, a small ship like a withered kernel in the sh.e.l.l of the bay, barque-rigged, antiquated, high p.o.o.ped, almost with the lines of a junk.
One might have fancied her designer to have taken for his model some old picture of the ships of Drake.
The try-pots, carcases and busy men left Raft unmoved. The ship held his whole mind.
"Lord! Look at her," said he.