Part 17 (1/2)

CHAPTER XVII

FRIENDS IN DESOLATION

She turned her face that way and stood for a moment with the faint breeze blowing her hair. Then she came running up the beach to the caves. In the men's cave she stood glancing rapidly about her like a person in a burning house seeking what he may save.

She picked up the tinder box and the box of matches and put them in her pocket. Then she began to remove everything from the cave. Making a sack of one of the blankets, she filled it with as much as she could drag along and brought it to the break in the cliffs where she dumped the contents.

It took her three journeys. Then, having collected everything in a big pile, she sat down for a moment to rest. The things would be safe here till she could fetch them to her new home, and the weather would not hurt them, except, maybe, the biscuits.

The thought of the biscuits troubled her, and the picture of them lying exposed in one of the torrential rains. Then she caught sight of a cleft in the basalt. It was dry and big enough to contain the bags and she placed them there having taken out some of their contents.

These and a couple of tins of meat she placed in one of the blankets, making a sack of it. Then she remembered the knife she had left lying on the sand before the cave where the dead man lay.

She fought against the idea of returning for it. Then her will made her go.

As she picked up the knife she glanced once again into the cave and once again caught a glimpse of the naked foot with the toe dug into the sand; then, placing the knife in its sheath and running like a frightened child she reached the break, caught up the sack, the extra blanket and the axe, which she had hidden among the bushes, and started.

It was not a heavy load, fortunately. Had it been heavy she would have dropped it, for, once moving, she had to run. The idea that she was deserting people who did not want to be deserted pursued her; now and again she stopped and turned for a moment--nothing; the Lizard rocks lay just the same and the beach and the forsaken boat, just the same, and the jeering gulls; yet, when she turned again to go on she had to run.

Near the great skull her right bootlace, getting loose, nearly tripped her. She sat down and tied it and then went on, walking now, but swiftly, till, nearing the river and in full sight of her new companions, she found herself suddenly free.

The hounds of Fear had given up the chase. The great sea elephants had driven them away. Here was no longer loneliness.

The great beasts sunning themselves on the flat rocks seemed more numerous and, as she crossed the river, a monster coming in from the sea in a thunder of foam saluted the land with a roar.

She recognized, or thought she recognized, the great bull that had followed her, he was lying, to-day, half-tilted to one side, he looked drunk with sun and laziness and as she came amongst them and sat down, as she had sat that day, she found that though a hundred pairs of eyes were watching her, scarcely a burly figure moved.

They had grown used to her, perhaps, or perhaps they recognized that she did not fear them now in the least, or that she had come for refuge and friends.h.i.+p.

Then she rose up and pa.s.sing amongst them as a friend amongst friends came towards the caves in the basalt cliffs. They were smaller than the caves to the west but they were dry and free from water drip. She chose one and put her bundle down with the axe beside it.

PART III

CHAPTER XVIII

G.o.d MADE FRIENDs.h.i.+P

The place was as populous as a town. That was the soul-satisfying fact which she absorbed as she sat with the bundle and axe beside her. To be lonely here one would have to be deaf and blind and without the sense of smell. Now that their attention was no longer strained by watching her the great brutes filled the place with all sorts of sounds, grunts and grumbles, puffs and snorts like the escape of steam from a locomotive and now and then the flop of a great body changing position. There was another sound she got to know and recognize, after a while, the grumbling and rumbling of their interiors. Infested with sea-lice they were always scratching. Quite close to the cave mouth three great bulls were lying and every now and then one of them would turn and twist round and scratch himself with his flippers, the nearest bull had lost an eye in some past battle and they were all scarred about the necks, and seen close like this, in their natural state and as one of their company, the marvel of them, was beyond speaking.

She took off the oilskin coat and laid it on the sand of the cave, took the things from the blanket and spread the two blankets out and folded them. As she moved about she saw that the bulls had turned slightly, attracted by her movements, but they shewed not the slightest sign of mind disturbance. Then, having placed the things in order, she came out and walked down to the water's edge, making a detour now and then to avoid treading on the flippers or the tail of a monster. On coming amongst them a few minutes ago she had felt not the slightest fear, but this walk in cold blood from the cliff to the sea edge made her hold her breath. She felt as she had felt that first day when she sat down close to them. Angry, and with a sudden movement, one of these creatures could have destroyed her as a man destroys a fly; but she held on, and was rewarded.

Not one of them shewed any wish to destroy her, or anger, or uneasiness.

They had accepted her into their company by not attacking or ejecting her, she ran counter to none of their desires or needs and evidently her form called up no recollections of the beast Man in their dim brains.

Then she was a female. s.e.x is more than a physical difference between one being and another, one can fancy it as one of the outstanding signs of the Wild to be read by instinct, as instinct reads the weather or season signs, or the sea mile posts that lead the seals and sea elephants thousands of leagues to strike some particular beach as an arrow strikes the bull's eye of a target.

The female, unless with young, is not dangerous to the male. One may fancy that amongst the few but burningly important warnings and directions in the book of Instinct.