Part 6 (1/2)

Oh, is it possible that we are the only people left?”

Bompard, without replying, swung his head round, then he rose and came over the thwarts. He caught La Touche by the leg.

”Gaston--rouse up--the lady is alive. It's me. Bompard.”

La Touche sat up, his hair towsled, his face creased, he seemed furious about something and pus.h.i.+ng Bompard away stared round and round at sea and sky as if in search of someone.

”Bon Dieu,” cried La Touche. ”The cursed boat.” He spat as though something bitter were in his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He did not seem to care a b.u.t.ton whether the lady were alive or not. He had been dreaming that he was in a tavern, just raising a gla.s.s to his mouth, and Bompard had awakened him to this.

The girl could not repeat the question to which there seemed no answer, she crawled into the stern sheets and sitting there, half bent, watched the two men. An observer perched in the sky above might have noticed the curious fact that on board the forsaken boat quarter deck and fo'c'sle still held sway, that the lady was the lady and the hands the hands, that Bompard was talking in an undertone, saying to La Touche: ”Come, get alive, get alive,” and that La Touche, after his first outburst, was holding himself in. They were old yachtsmen, no disaster could shake that fact.

La Touche, rising and taking his seat on a thwart and looking everywhere but in the direction of the girl, as though ashamed of something, began cutting up some tobacco in a mechanical way, whilst Bompard, on his knees, was exploring the contents of the forward locker. La Touche was a fair-haired man, younger than Bompard, a melancholy looking individual who always seemed gazing at the worst of things. He spoke now as the girl drew his attention to something far away in the east, something sketched vaguely in the sky as though a picture lay there beyond the haze.

”Ay, that's Kerguelen,” said La Touche.

Bompard, on his knees, and with a maconochie tin in his left hand, raised his head and looked.

”Ay, that's Kerguelen,” said Bompard.

”And look,” said the girl, pointing towards Kerguelen. ”Is not that the sail of a boat, away ever so far--or is it a gull? Now it's gone. Look, there it is again.”

Bompard looked.

”I see nothing,” said he, ”gull, most like--there wouldn't be any boat from us, they're all gone, unless it was a boat from that hooker we struck.”

”Boat,” said La Touche with a dismal laugh. ”She got no boat away, she went down by the bows with the fellows like flies on her, this is the only boat of the lot that got away.”

The girl with her hand shading her eyes was still looking.

”It's gone, whatever it may have been,” said she, ”can we reach the land?”

”Why, yes, mademoiselle,” said Bompard, ”the wind is setting towards there and we have a sail, I am going to step the mast now when I've taken stock--well, we won't starve. The tube is provisioned for a full crew for a fortnight, water too, we won't starve, that's a fact. La Touche, get a move on and help me with the sail.”

”I'm coming,” grumbled La Touche.

It seemed to the girl that the minds and the tongues and the movements of the two men were part of some slow-acting, wooden, automatic mechanism. Whether they reached the land or not seemed a matter almost of indifference to them. Accustomed to people who talked much and had much to talk about she could not understand. All this was part of the new world in which she found herself, part of the boat itself, of the mast, now stepped against the grey sky, the waves, the gulls, and that tremendous outline of mountains now more visible to the east--Kerguelen.

A world of things without thought, or all but thoughtless, things that, yet, dominated mind more profoundly than the power of mind itself.

Bompard was munching a biscuit he had taken from one of the bread bags as he worked. She noticed the bag, its texture, and the words ”Traversal--Toulon” stamped on it. The maconochie tin which he had placed on a seat and a tin of beef with a Libby label held her eyes as though they were things new and extraordinary. They were. They were food. She had never seen food before, food as it really is, the barrier between life and death, food naked and stripped of all pretence.

Bompard coming aft with the sheet s.h.i.+pped the tiller, and, taking his seat by the girl, put the boat before the wind. La Touche, who had taken his seat on the after thwart, was engaged in opening the tin of beef.

The girl scarcely noticed him. She was experiencing a new sensation, the sensation of sailing with the wind and the run of the swell. The boat, from a dead thing tossing on the waves, had suddenly become a thing alive, buoyant, eager and full of purpose, silent, too, for the slapping and buffeting of the water against the planking had ceased. Running thus with the wind and swell there was no opposition, everything was with her.

”Well, it's beef,” said La Touche who had managed to open the Libby tin, ”it might be worse.”

He dug out a piece with his knife and presented it to the girl with a biscuit, then he helped Bompard and himself, then he scrambled forward, leaving his beef and biscuit on the thwart, and reappeared with a pannikin of water; it was handed to the lady first.

The food seemed to loose their tongues. It was as though the caste difference had been broken by the act of eating together.