Then began a dismal argument, full of words and repet.i.tions but with few ideas, and from the trend of it the curious fact appeared that La Touche, the ship"s grouser and dismal James, was taking the optimistical side, whilst Bompard, generally cheerful, was the pessimist.
La Touche"s optimism was, perhaps, the outcome of fear. What they had gone through was nothing to the prospect of having to make a landing on that tremendous coast, simply because what they had gone through had come on them suddenly. This thing had to be faced in cold blood. The coward in La Touche refused to face it fully, refused to face the fact that with this swell and with all the chances of uncharted and unknown reefs and rocks the risk was appalling. He grew angry.
"Don"t be a coward over it," said he. That set Bompard off, and for a moment the girl thought they would have come to blows. Then it pa.s.sed and they were as friendly as before, just as though nothing had happened.
Their talk and the whole business had been conducted as though the girl were not there. In the few hours since daybreak, quarter deck and fo"c"sle had vanished. They had become welded into one community, all equal, and the lady was no longer the lady. There was no hint of disrespect, no hint of respect. They were all equal, equal sharers in the chances of the sea.
More, the s.e.x standard seemed to have vanished with the social. Nothing remained but the human, for that is the rule with the open boat at sea.
When they lowered the sail for screening purposes, when they raised it again, it was all the same, for the human level is above all little things.
Towards noon and with the coast now closer and well-defined, La Touche sighted something ahead. It was a rock, high and pointed like a black spire protruding from the sea and standing there like an outpost of the land.
"Had we better give it a wide berth?" asked La Touche. "Maybe there"s more near it."
"The sea is running smooth enough by it," said Bompard. "I don"t see breakers, and we don"t draw anything to speak of." He held on.
The sun was shewing through breaks in the high clouds and its light fell on the water and the rock, pied with roosting guillemots. As the boat drew near the guillemots gave tongue. The sound came against the wind fierce and complaining, antagonistic like the voice of loneliness crying out against them and telling them to be gone--be gone--be gone!
Cleo, as they pa.s.sed, saw the green water sliding up and falling from the polished black rock surface. The sight seemed to bring the hostile coast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying of the guillemots as it died away behind them seemed a barrier pa.s.sed, never to be re-crossed.
CHAPTER VII
THE COAST
And now, away at sea and leagues from the coast they were approaching, vast islands disclosed themselves suddenly through the sea haze, standing like giants waist deep in the ocean, whilst the coast itself with its cliffs and rocks of black basalt and dolerite shewed clear, extraordinarily clear, with every detail defined in the sunlight, from the rifts in the basalt to the gulls blowing about in legions and the great sea-geese hovering and fishing.
The coast was ferocious, and the whole country from the sea foam to the foothills looked tumbled and new, with the newness of infinite antiquity. The last thunders of creation seemed scarcely to have died away, the last throe scarcely to have ceased, leaving million-ton rock cast on rock and the new, shear-cut cliffs spitting back their first taste of the bitter sea.
"There is nowhere to land," said the girl. She was shuddering as a dog shudders when overstrung.
"Ay, it"s a brute beast of a place," said Bompard, "well, we must nose along on the lookout. There"s no coast but hasn"t some landing-place where a boat can push in. Y"see it"s not like a ship. A boat can go where a ship can"t."
He shifted the helm a bit, keeping the coast parallel to them on the starboard side.
"Might those islands be better to go to?" asked she, "they couldn"t be worse than that."
La Touche suddenly grew excited. "Bon Dieu," cried he, "what a thing to be saying! Those islands, nothing but rocks--nothing but rocks. Here there is land, at all events, good land one can put one"s foot on; out there there"s nothing but rocks. Rather than go out there I would swim ash.o.r.e--I would--"
"Oh, close up," said Bompard, "don"t talk about swimming--maybe you"ll have to."
"One can always drown," said La Touche.
It was Bompard who next broke the silence.
"I"ve been over cliffs worse than those, for gulls eggs," said he, "take one coast with another, coasts are pretty much the same, you get bad bits and easy bits, that is all."
La Touche said nothing.
As they drew on the great islands out at sea ranged themselves more definitely and the tremendous coast to starboard shewed more clearly its deep cut canons, its sea arches and absolute desolation.
The sea had fallen, though the wind still held steady, and this surface calmness, under-run by a gentle swell, served only to emphasize the vastness of the view. The island seemed immensely remote and immense in size, the far snow-covered mountains the mountains of a land where giants had lived and from which they had departed countless ages ago.
Oyster catches pa.s.sed the boat with their melancholy cry, but the fishing gannets and the swimming puffins seemed scarcely to heed the intruders. Puffins swimming a biscuit toss away as though they had never learned the fear of man.
They had drawn nearer sh.o.r.e so that the boom of the swell in the caves and on the rocks came to them with the crying of the sh.o.r.e birds; pa.s.sing a headland like a vast lizard they opened a beach curved like the new moon and seven miles from horn to horn.
"There"s our landing-place," cried Bompard, "big enough to pick and choose from."
"Lord!" shouted La Touche. "Look over there--moving rocks!"
He pointed half a mile away to seaward.
Bompard looked.
"Those crest rocks, they"re whales," said he.
A pair of whales shewed, standing up, coupling in the chill blue grey water, a miraculous sight, as though they had entered a world where the original things of life still moved and had their being untroubled by man and untouched by Time.
Bompard shifted the helm, and the boat, heading for the sh.o.r.e and no longer running before the wind, moved less easily, shipping an occasional dash of spray.
The change of movement, the dash of spray, the altered course were to the girl like the turning of a corner. Running with the wind and with a parallel sh.o.r.e the boat was the world and the coast and island a panorama. With the twist of the helm Reality made the coast a destination. Up to this moment the uncertainty of whether they could land had held her mind, up to this moment all sorts of vague possibilities, the chance of meeting a ship, the chance of being blown out to sea, the chance of this or that had come between her and the realisation of the fact that this prison was hers.
The monstrosity of the idea stood fully revealed only now on that beach where there was nothing but sand, nothing but rocks, nothing but gulls.
Close in now Bompard let go the sheet and they unstepped the mast, the boat rocking in the trough of the swell. Then they got the oars out.
As they bent to their work and over the creak of the leather in the rowlocks the rumble and fume of the seven mile beach came mixed with the yelping and mewing of the gulls. The boat made slow progress, then a few yards from the surf line it hung for a moment till the rowers suddenly gave way and moving like a relieved arrow she came on the crest of a wave, then the oars came in with a crash and the two men tumbling out dragged her nose high and dry. They helped the girl out and as they pulled the boat higher she stood, the wind flicking her oilskin coat about her and the spindrift blowing in her face.
PART II
CHAPTER VIII
THE AWAKENING
The great beach of Kerguelen shews above tide mark long stretches where no sand is, only rock. Basalt planed and smoothed by the seas of countless ages, level as a ball-room floor and broken by rifts and pot holes, between tide marks these pot holes serve as traps for all sorts of sea creatures. Once the waves must have beaten right up to the low and broken basalt cliffs full of caves floored with sand, but volcanic action raising the beach has pushed the tide mark out leaving a sh.o.r.e varying in width from half a mile to a few hundred yards.
This is the breeding place of the sea elephant. Half way between the lizard point and the point further to the east a river comes down disembarging through three months; on the banks of this river is the seal nursery where in summer the young sea elephants tumble and play and take their swimming lessons, whilst the mothers lie on rocks and the fathers fish and hunt and fight in battles, the roaring of which resounds for miles. Here the penguins drill and hold councils and law courts and marry and get divorced and hold political meetings, here the rabbits play and the terns foregather, and here the winds that blow from everywhere but the east, hunt and yell and pile in winter a twenty foot sea that breaks in seven miles of thunder under seven miles of spray thick as the smoke of battle.
Duck and teal haunt the place and gulls of nearly every known kind snow it and flick it with movement. Yet above the thunder of the waves and the cries of the birds and the shouting of the winds when they blow, there hangs a silence--the silence of the remote and prehistoric. The living world of men seems cut off from here by far away doors and forever.
After supper they had explored the cave mouths in the cliff opposite to where the boat had beached. There were three caves just here. One was impracticable owing to water dripping from the roof, but the other two, floored with hard sand, were good enough for shelter. The men had stowed the provisions and themselves in the western mast giving the girl the other and the boat sail for a pillow.