Part 23 (1/2)

His mind seemed to possess an equable warm temperature, a temperature that it seeetting angry about anything Had she seen hi the crowd and tossing men about like ninepins, she would have said: 'This is not the saht

”Where did you come fro the gulls dashi+ng about over the crests of the inco seas

”I came from Paris--you have never been to Paris?”

No, he had never been to Paris He knew of the place, it was in France

Then she thought that she would interest hi to describe it

She spoke of the busy streets and the great Boulevards, then she tried to describe the people and what they were doing and then, as she talked, it was just as though Kerguelen had becos of civilisation, as exemplified by Paris, a panora, those crowds that she could visualize so plainly?--deputies, lawyers, military men, shop-keepers, pleasure seekers--towards what end were they going?

Then, with a strange little shock, it ca, as a mass, nowhere except from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn; that they were exactly like the crowd of sea gulls, each individual rotating in its own little orbit, and that the wonderful coloured and spangled crust called Civilization was nothing more than the excretion of individual aies

Then, when she had finished her talk about the wonderful city of Paris, she found that Raft, coainst the cave wall, was asleep

One of the disconcerting things about this huge creature was his capacity for sleep He would drop asleep like a dog at the shortest notice and lie with his face in the crook of his arm like a dead ether as he lay like this, and at first the vague fear used to come to her that he had been stricken by so sickness that made him act like this She did not know that he had kept awake all those nights he had looked after her and that the same brain that could sleep and sleep and sleep could put sleep entirely away, just as the great body that lolled about like the sea elephants, could, like the sea-elephants, beco, tireless, and capable of infinite endurance

Then again, he would sh oblivious of her existence She had observed the sa in Bompard and La Touche ould sit cheek by joithout a word, as though they had quarrelled This trait pleased her, and she fell in with it unconsciously as though hisit the taciturnity of the sea

One day, during a brief spell of cal to do, she tried the effect of literature upon him She told hihted to find hiiant” was a iant--it occurred in her version--pleased him immensely Then when she had finished she was alarmed to find, from words dropped by him, that he considered the story to be true, or at least to be taken seriously She did not disillusion him; to do so she would have had to tell hi He would have said to himself ”what made her lie to ined a person sitting down to invent in cold blood for the amusement of others a yarn about what never happened; no, it would have struck hi personal yarns heard in the fo'c'sle sometimes and likely to produce a boot ai books in the fo'c'sle occasionally and old newspapers, but of literature, fictional or otherwise, he had no more idea than the bull sea elephants of astronoue But she had interested hi from her memory the story of the Forty Thieves

Now he had accepted the bean stalk explanation, for he had never to his knowledge seen a bean stalk, but the jars in the Forty Thieves he revolted at, for a jar to hiet into that

However, on explanation, he passed the jars, and the boiling oil repaid hiht in torture and blood

”Where did you get that yarn from?” asked he

”Out of a book,” said she

”Got anyround in herhow it happens that children's stories run so frequently to blood and ferocity

She reled before the shrine of Our Lady, having no better offering toin Mary, the patron of Catholic shi+pmates She told it so well and so simply, with unobtrusive foot notes as to monasteries and their contents, that he could not but see the point, the poorto offer but his stock in trade of tricks, offered it

Well, what of that? It was the best he had, and, if she could see the other chaps doing things for her, she could see him The story, whose whole point lies in the supposed non-existence of the virgin as a discerning being, ought to cast its gentle ridicule not on the ignorant juggler but on the more learned brethren of the monastery To Raft they were all in the same boat, and as to whether she could see them or not he didn't know

The story fell flat, horribly flat, told to the absolutely simple hearted, and to the Teller, after explanations were over, it seeenius and exposed a little trickyon a view point of chilled steel

That Raft, in fact, was so big in a formless way that he was much above the story

She re occasion with Blue Beard

Then the weather broke fair and the islands dreay and the clouds rose high and the white terns, always flitting like dragon-flies amidst the other birds, rose like the clouds, they always flew higher in fine weather, and with the sn: the little sea elephants were no longer confining themselves to the river and near shore So boldly to the sea Their s way out

This fact gave the girl food for thought The su was right, that no shi+ps would venture into that sea between the islands and the shore, and that their only hope of rescue lay in that bay away to the west, heaven kne far