Part 7 (1/2)
Then began a disument, full of words and repetitions but with few ideas, and from the trend of it the curious fact appeared that La Touche, the shi+p's grouser and disenerally cheerful, was the pessimist
La Touche's optione through was nothing to the prospect of having toon that treh had co 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 Boht they would have come to blows Then it passed 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 coer 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 sex standard see 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 sas
Towards noon and with the coast now closer and well-defined, La Touche sighted soh and pointed like a black spire protruding fro there like an outpost of the land
”Had we better give it a wide berth?” asked La Touche ”Maybe there's h by it,” said Bo 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 guilleue The sound caonistic like the voice of loneliness crying out against theone!
Cleo, as they passed, saw the green water sliding up and falling fro the hostile coast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying of the guillemots as it died away behind them seemed a barrier passed, never to be re-crossed
CHAPTER VII
THE COAST
And noay at sea and leagues fro, vast islands disclosed theiants 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, froions and the great sea-geese hovering and fishi+ng
The coast was ferocious, and the whole country from the sea foam to the foothills looked tumbled and neith 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 Bo on the lookout There's no coast but hasn't so-place where a boat can push in Y'see it's not like a shi+p A boat can go where a shi+p can't”
He shi+fted the hel the coast parallel to theht 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 ashore--I would--”
”Oh, close up,” said Bo--maybe you'll have to”
”One can always drown,” said La Touche