Part 8 (2/2)

It was the wind. The Wooley, which is the fist of Kerguelen suddenly clenched and hitting out from the shoulder of the great islands now suddenly stormed about with foam and veiled in spray.

Half stunned, she twisted round, still lying but fronting it now with her arm protecting her face. The beach had loudened up in thunder from end to end but the yelling Wooley as it met the cliffs and howled inland almost drowned the thunder of the waves. Then it died down as suddenly as it had come, and the boom of the surf rose high, as the girl, gathering herself together, got up and struggled on.

She was no longer thinking of her hair. It was the first lesson of the school of Kerguelen. ”Here you shall think of nothing but the moment, of the ground beneath your feet, of the bite you put in your mouth, of the rock that stands before you.”

When she reached the cave with her petticoats thrusting about her she was met by the two men and as she came up to them La Touche was cursing the wind. The Wooley had all but blown him down too. He had got up sooner than Bompard and had received the full face of it ”in the pit of the stomach.” He seemed to look on it as a personal matter affecting him alone.

Even as he spoke a sudden calm fell, lasted for a moment, and was followed by a howl from inland.

At a stroke the wind had changed right round and was blowing now from the mountains. Here in the shelter of the cliffs they scarcely felt it but the s.h.i.+ft had raised an appalling cross sea. Right away to the islands there was nothing but tumbling foam, waves standing up and fighting waves in a battle that spread for leagues.

”It's well for us we didn't fall in with this yesterday,” said Bompard ”a s.h.i.+p couldn't stand it.”

”And what s.h.i.+p will ever poke her nose in here to take us off do you think?” asked La Touche. ”This is what you get every day of the week, if all accounts are true--this, and worse. I tell you we've come to the wrong place. There's no getting over it. We've come to the wrong place.”

”Well, right or wrong, here we are,” said Bompard ”Mon Dieu! to hear you talk you'd think we'd come here on purpose--come, get a move on and let's have some grub.”

He turned into the cave and they fetched out the can of beef they had opened yesterday, some biscuits, and a water breaker, and sitting at the cave mouth they ate just as the men of the Stone Age ate, with the palms of their hands for plates and their fingers for forks. They spoke scarcely at all. The ill-humor of La Touche seemed like a contagious disease, even Bompard, the imperturbable, seemed glum.

It was the girl who broke the strain.

Suddenly she began to speak as if giving voice to carefully thought out ideas. Yet what she said was absolutely spontaneous, the result of a quick, educated mind suddenly grasping the essentials of their position, suggestion breeding suggestion.

”There's no use in grumbling,” said she. ”That wind knocked me down as I was coming along the beach. I didn't grumble, and there is no use in thinking. I was thinking as I walked along that I had no brush and comb to do my hair with, you two have short hair and you can't imagine what it is to a person with long hair when they find themselves without a brush and comb. I was grumbling to myself about it when the wind knocked me down. I want just to tell you what is in my mind: we will die or go mad if we do not forget everything as much as we can and not think of to-morrow or yesterday or s.h.i.+ps coming to take us off. We have to fight all sorts of things that don't care in the least for us and we have to work. Everything here is at work in its own way. Well, we must do as everything else does or die.”

”It's easy to say work,” said La Touche munching a biscuit, ”but what is one to work at?”

”We want food for one thing, our provisions won't last forever.”

”There's rabbits enough,” said Bompard. ”Remember those rabbits we saw running out on the beach last evening?”

”I can snare rabbits all right,” said La Touche, ”but where's the wire to make snares with--see--we're caught everywhere.”

”Wait,” said Bompard.

He got up and went down to the boat, hunted in one of the lockers and returned with a spool of wire.

He flung it at La Touche.

”There's your wire,” said he.

Cleo's eyes brightened. The spool of wire seemed to her a fruit suddenly born from her words; she had accomplished something, it was perhaps the first real accomplishment in her life.

”Where did you get it from?” asked La Touche.

”The forward locker,” replied Bompard.

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