Part 19 (2/2)

This was what no one had ever imagined in connection with Desolation.

Its power to kill with its own hand. To gently destroy, sucking the vitality like a vampire and fanning the victim to dullness with its wings.

The sea elephants might have noticed that the female creature to whom they had grown so accustomed appeared little now, a shrinking vision that every day shortened its wanderings; that it walked differently, that it seemed more bent. But the sea elephants knew nothing of Loneliness or its works, nor did they notice, one morning, that though the sun was s.h.i.+ning the figure did not appear at all.

CHAPTER XXII

A NEWCOMER

One morning, brilliant, with the deceptive brilliancy of Kerguelen, a big man, rough and red-bearded and carrying a bundle slung over his shoulder, stood on the rocks that formed the eastern point of the great beach; the sun was at his back and before him lay the seven mile stretch of sand and rock leading to the far-off Lizard Point.

He was over six feet in height but so strongly built that he scarcely looked his inches. He was a sailor. The gulls might have told that by the way he stood, and his eyes, accustomed to roving over vast s.p.a.ces, swept the beach before him from end to end, took in the sea elephants moving like slugs and the seal-nursery and the river and the sands beyond and the Lizard Point crawling out to sea beyond the sands.

Then he cast his eyes inland.

He wanted to get to the west and he had to choose between seven miles of broken country or seven miles of easy beach.

The sea elephants were a bar across the beach. He could gauge their size from where he stood, they looked formidable, but they were less so than the rocks strewing that broken country. He had climbed over rocks and gone round rocks and nearly fallen from rocks till rocks had become in his mind enemies bitter, brutal, callous, and far more formidable than live things. He chose the beach and came down to it, taking his way along the sea edge as a person takes his way along a pavement edge, giving possibly turbulent people the wall.

As he closed up towards the seal beach he kept his eyes fixed on the great bulls and their families, and the bulls, as he drew closer, s.h.i.+fted their position to watch him, beyond that they shewed no sign.

Then as he began to pa.s.s them he recognised that he had nothing to fear, the females alone, here and there, shewed any sign of disturbance, shuffling towards him with wicked eyes, rising on their flippers, but always sinking down and shuffling back as he went on.

Further along, though followed and met by a hundred pairs of eyes, even the females began to treat him with indifference. It was as though the whole herd were under the dominion of one brain that recognized him as harmless and pa.s.sed him along. He would pause now and then to look at them with the admiration of strength for strength. He was of their type, a bull man, rough from the sea as themselves.

Then he saw the caves and would have pa.s.sed them only for something that caught his eye. A red labelled Libby tin was lying on the dark sand close to the mouth of one of the caves, and if you wish to know how an old tomato tin or an old beef tin can shout, you must go alone to the great beach of Kerguelen and find one there--which you will not.

The sight of the tin made him start and catch in his breath. The tin was everything he knew of s.h.i.+ps and men focussed in a point, a knight in armour riding along the beach would have astonished him no more, would have heated his blood far less.

He struck up towards it, took it in his hand, examined it inside and out and then cast his eye at the cave before which it had lain. He saw something in the cave, it was a woman; a woman lying on the sand with a rolled-up blanket under her head. She was lying on her back and he saw a thin white hand, so small, so thin, so strange that he drew slightly back, glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure that everything was all right with the world, and then glanced again, drawing closer.

Then he called out and the woman moved. He could see her face now, white, and thin and drawn, and great eyes, terrible eyes, fixed on him.

Away out at sea, terribly near the coast of Death she saw him, a living being, as the castaway sees a s.h.i.+p on the far horizon.

He saw her hold out her arms to him and then, throwing his bundle aside, he was down on his knees beside her, holding the hands that sought his and with those terrible eyes holding him too.

He saw her lips moving, saw that they were dry and parched. Then he knew. She wanted water.

An empty baling tin was lying near her. The sight of the river close by was in his mind, he released the hands, picked up the tin and scrambled out of the cave. As he ran to the river heedless of sea elephants or anything else he kept crying out: ”Oh, the poor woman. Oh, the poor woman.” He seemed like a huge thing demented. The baby sea elephants scuttered out of his way and as he came running back he spilt half the contents of the tin. Then he was down beside her again, dipping his finger in the water and moistening her lips.

She sucked his finger as a baby sucks and the feel of that made him curse with the tears running down into his beard. The size of the baling tin seemed horrible beyond words; he couldn't get it to her lips. Still he went on, not knowing that it was his finger that was giving her back life; the blessed touch of a human being that had come almost too late.

He was sitting on his heels, and now, casting his great head from side to side, he saw things stacked behind her, tins and a bag and metal things that shone dimly. Putting out his hand he caught a corner of the bag. It was a bread bag, sure enough, and as he pulled it towards him the other things came clattering down almost hitting her, and amongst them, G.o.d-sent, a little tin spoon.

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