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THE
BEACH OF DREAMS
A ROMANCE
BY
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
AUTHOR OF "THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF," "THE GHOST GIRL,"
"THE GOLD TRAIL," "THE BLUE LAGOON," ETC.
THE NATIONAL BOOK CO.
PUBLISHERS
28 WEST 44TH ST., NEW YORK
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COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY STREET & SMITH
COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ALBATROSS 9
II. NORTH-WEST 14
III. THE GASTON DE PARIS 22
IV. DISASTER 41
V. VOICES IN THE NIGHT 48
VI. DAWN 53
VII. THE COAST 66
PART II
VIII. THE AWAKENING 73
IX. THE WOOLEY 80
X. THE CROSS 94
XI. THE CACHE 103
XII. THE QUARREL 117
XIII. WHERE IS BOMPARD? 124
XIV. THE DEATH TRAPS 132
XV. THE STROKE 143
XVI. ALONE 146
XVII. FRIENDS IN DESOLATION 153
PART III
XVIII. GOD MADE FRIENDSHIP 159
XIX. THE BIRDS 167
XX. VÆ VICTIS 171
PART IV
XXI. TIME PASSES 181
XXII. A NEWCOMER 185
XXIII. RAFT 194
XXIV. A DREAM 203
XXV. STORIES ON THE BEACH 211
XXVI. THE GREAT WIND 225
PART V
XXVII. THE CORRIDOR 233
XXVIII. NIGHT 248
XXIX. THE SUMMIT 253
XXX. THE BAY 259
XXXI. THE SHIP 264
XXXII. THE OPIUM SMOKERS 272
XXXIII. MAINSAIL HAUL 277
XXXIV. THE CARCASSONNE 281
PART VI
XXXV. MARSEILLES 289
XXXVI. THE LEPER 301
XXXVII. A NEW HOME 313
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THE BEACH OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
THE ALBATROSS
The fo'c'sle, lit by a teapot lamp, shewed the port watch in their
bunks, snoring, all but Harbutt and Raft seated on a chest, Harbutt
patching a pair of trousers, Raft smoking.
Raft was a big red-headed man with eyes that seemed always roving over
great distances as though in search of something. He was thirty-two
years of age and he had used the sea since twelve--twenty years. His
past was a long succession of fo'c'sles, bar-rooms, blazing suns, storms
and sea happenings so run together that all sequence was lost. Beyond
them lay a dismal blotch, his childhood. He had entered the world and
literally and figuratively had been laid at the door of a workhouse; of
his childhood he remembered little, of his parentage he knew nothing. In
drink he was quiet, but most dangerous under certain provocations.
It was as though deep in his being lay a blazing hatred born of
injustice through ages and only coming to light when upborne by
balloon-juice. On these occasions a saloon bar with its glitter and
phantom show of mirth and prosperity sometimes called on him to dispense
and destroy it, the passion to fight the crowd seized him, a passion
that has its origin, perhaps, in sources other than alcohol.
He was talking now to Harbutt, scarcely lowering his voice on account of
the fellows in the bunks. Snoring and drugged with ozone a kick would
only have made them curse and turn on the other side, and as he talked
his voice made part of that procession of noises inseparable from the
fo'c'sle of a ship under sail against a head sea. He had been holding
forth on the food and general conditions of this ship compared with the
food and conditions of his last, when Harbutt cut in.
"There's not a pin to choose between owners, and ships is owners as far
as a sailorman's concerned.--Blast them."
"I was in a hooker once," said Raft, "and the Old Man came across a lot
of cheap sugar, served it out to save the m'lasses. It was lead, most of
it, and the chaps that swallowed it their teeth came out."
"What happened to them then?"
"They croaked. I joined at Bombay, after the business, or I'd have
croaked too."
"What ship was that?" asked Harbutt.
"I've forgot her name, it was a good bit back--but it's the truth."
"Of course it's the truth," replied the other, "who's doubtin' you, any
dog's trick played on a sailorman's the truth, you can lay to that.
I've had four years of sea and I oughta know."
"What's this you were?" asked Raft.
"Oh, I was a lot o' things," replied Harbutt. "Wished I'd never left
them to join this b--y business, but it's the same ashore, owners all
the time stuffin' themselves and gettin' rich, workers starvin'."
Raft belonged to the old time labour world dating from Pelagon, he
grumbled, but had no grudge against owners in general, it was only in
drink that Pelagon rose in him. Harbutt was an atom of the new voice
that is heard everywhere now, even in fo'c'sles. He had failed in
everything on land and a'board ship he was a slacker. You cannot be a
voice and an A.B. at the same time.
"What was your last job ashore?" went on Raft with the persistence of a
child, always wanting to know.
"Cleanin' out pig sties," said Harbutt viciously. "Drove to it. I tell
you when a chap's down he's down, the chaps that has money tramples on
the chaps that hasn't. I've been through it and I know. It's the rich
man does it."
"Well," said Raft, "I don't even remember seeing one."
"Haven't you ever been in no cities?"
"I've been in cities right enough, but most by the water-side."
"Well, you've seen chaps in plug hats and chaps drivin' in carriages,
that's the sort that keeps us down, that's the sort we've got to make
an end of."
Raft did not quite see. He had a respect for Harbutt mixed with a
contempt for him as a sailor. Harbutt knew a lot--but he could not see
how the chaps in plug hats kept other people down; the few he had seen
had always seemed to him away and beyond his world, soft folk, and
always busy about their own affairs--and how were they to be made an end
of?
"Do you mean killing them?" he asked.
"Oh, there's other ways than killin'," replied Harbutt. "It's not them,
it's their money does the trick."
He finished his patch and turned in. Raft finished his pipe and turned
in also and the fo'c'sle was given over to the noises of the sea and the
straining timbers of the ship.
Now that the figures of the two sailors had vanished its personality
took fuller life, grim, dark, close, like the interior of a grimy hand
clutching the lives of all those sleepers. The beams shewed like the
curved fingers, and the heel of the bowsprit like the point of the
in-turned thumb, a faint soul-killing rock of kerosene filled it,
intensifying, after the fashion of ambergris, all the other perfumes,
without losing in power. Bilge, tobacco and humanity, you cannot know
what these things are till they are married with the reek of kerosene,
with the grunts and snores of weary men, with lamplight dimmed with
smoke haze; with the heave and fall of the sea; the groaning of timbers
and the boom of the waves. This is the fo'c'sle whose great, great,
great grandmother was the lower deck of the trireme where slaves chained
to benches laboured till they died, just as they labour to-day.
CHAPTER II
NORTH-WEST
The _Albatross_, bound from Cape Town to Melbourne, had been blown out
of her course and south of the Crozet Islands; she was now steering
north-west, making towards Kerguelen, across an ice-blue sea, vast, like
a country of broken crystal strewn with snow. The sky, against which the
top-gallant stay-sails shewed gull-white in the sun, had the cold blue
of the sea and was hung round at the horizon by clouds like the white
clouds that hang round the Pacific Trades.
Raft was at the wheel and Captain Pound the master was pacing the deck
with Mason the first officer, up and down, pausing now and then for a
glance away to windward, now with an eye aloft at the steadfast canvas,
talking all the time of subjects half a world away.
It was a sociable ship as far as the afterguard was concerned. Pound
being a rough and capable man of the old school with no false dignity
and an open manner of speech. He had been talking of his little house at
Twickenham, of Mrs. Pound and the children, of servants and neighbours
that were unsociable and now he was talking of dreams. He had been
dreaming the night before of Pembroke docks, the port he had started
from as a boy. Pembroke docks was a bad dream for Pound, and he said so.
It always heralded some disaster when it appeared before him in
dreamland.
"I've always dreamt before that I was starting from there," said he,
"but last night I was getting the old _Albatross_ in, and the tow rope
went, and the tug knocked herself to bits, and then the old hooker swung
round and there was Mrs. P. on the quayside in her night attire shouting
to me to put the helm down--under hare sticks in the docks, mind you!"
"Dreams are crazy things," said Mason. "I don't believe there's anything
in them."
"Well, maybe not," said Pound. He glanced at the binnacle card and then
went below.
Nothing is more impressive to the unaccustomed mind than the spars and
canvas of a ship under full sail seen from the deck, nothing more
suggestive of power and the daring of man than the sight of those
leviathan spars and vast sail spaces rising dizzily from main and
foresail in pyramids to where the truck works like a pencil point
writing on the sky. Nothing more arresting than the power of the
steersman. A turn of the wheel in the hands of Raft would set all that
canvas shuddering or thundering, spilling the wind as the water is
spilled from a reservoir, a moment's indecision or slackness might lose
the ship a mile on her course. But Raft steered as he breathed,
automatically, almost unconsciously, almost without effort. He, who
ashore was hopelessly adrift and without guidance, at the helm was all
wisdom, direction and intuition.
The wake of the _Albatross_ lay as if drawn with a ruler.
His trick was nearly up, and when he was relieved he went forward;
pausing at the fo'c'sle head to light a pipe he fell in talk with some
of the hands, leaning with his back against the bulwarks and blown upon
by the spill of the wind from the head sails.
An old shell-back by name of Ponting was holding the floor.
"We're comin' up to Kerguelen," he was saying. "Should think I did know
it. Put in there in a sealer out of New Bedford in '82. I wasn't more'n
a boy then. The Yanks used to use that place a lot in those days. The
blackest blastedest hole I ever struck. Christmas Island was where we
lay mostly, for two months, the chaps huntin' the wal'uses and killin'
more than they could carry. The blastedest hole I ever struck."
"I was there in a Dane once," began another of the crew. "It was time of
year the sea cows was matin' and you could hear the roarin' of them ten
mile off."
"Dane," said Ponting, "what made you ship a'board a Dane--I've heard
tell of Danes. Knew a chap signed on in one of them Leith boots out of
Copenhagen runnin' north, one of them old North Sea cattle trucks turned
into a passenger tramp, passengers and ponies with a hundred ton of hay
stowed forward and the passengers lyin' on their backs on it smokin'
their pipes, and the bridge crawled over with passengers, girls and
children, and the chap at the wheel havin' to push 'em out of the way,
kept hittin' reefs all the run from Leith to God knows where, and the
Old Man playin' the fiddle most of the time."
"That chap said the Danes was a d----d lot too sociable for him."
Raft listened without entirely comprehending. He had always been a
fore-mast hand. He knew practically nothing of steam and he would just
as soon have fancied himself a railway porter as a hand on a passenger
ship. He was one of the old school of merchant seamen and the idea of a
cargo of girls and children and general passengers, not to speak of
ponies, was beyond him.
The girls he had mostly known were of the wharf-side. He finished his
pipe and went down below--and turned in.
He was rousted out by the voice of the Bo'sw'n calling for all hands on
deck and slipping into his oilskins he came up, receiving a smack of sea
in his face as he emerged from the fo'c'sle hatch. The wind had shifted
and a black squall coming up from astern had hit the ship. More was
coming and through the sheeting rain and spindrift the voice of the
Bo'sw'n was roaring to let go the fore top-gallant halyards.
Next moment Raft was in the rigging followed by others. The sail had to
be stowed. The wind tried to tear him loose and the sheeting rain to
drown him, but he went on clinging to the top-gallant mast-stays and
looking down he could see the faces of the others following him, faces
sheeted over with rain and working blindly upwards.
Ponting was the man immediately below him, and taking breath for a
moment and against the wind, Ponting was now yelling out that they had
their work cut out for them.
They had.
The top-gallant sail had taken charge of itself, and Raft and Ponting as
they lay out on the yard seemed battling with a thing alive,
intelligent, and desperately wicked.
The sail snored and trembled and sang, standing out in great hoods and
folds, hard as steel; now it would yield, owing to a slackening of the
wind, and then, like a brute that had only been waiting to take them by
surprise, it would burst out again, releasing itself, whilst the yard
buckled and sprang, almost casting them from it.
Then began a battle fought without a sound or cry except the bubbling
and snoring of the great sail struggling for its wicked liberty, it
shrank and they flung themselves on it, it bellied and flung them back,
clinging to the lift they saved themselves, attacking it again with the
dumb fury of dogs or wolves on a fighting prey. Twenty times it tried to
destroy them and twenty times they all but had it under.
The fight died out of the monster for a moment and Raft had nearly an
armful of it in when it stiffened, fighting free of him, owing to
Ponting and the other fellow not having made good. They clung for a
moment without moving, resting, and Raft glancing down saw far away
below the narrow deck driving wedge-like through the foam-capped seas.
Then the struggle began again. The sail, like its would-be captors,
seemed also to have taken breath, it held firm, relaxed, banged out
again in thunder, developed new hoods and folds as a struggling monster
might develop new heads and kinks, and then, all of a sudden when it
seemed that no effort was of avail the end came.
The wind paused for a moment, as if gathering up all its strength
against the dogged persistency which is man, and in that moment the
three on the yard had the sail under their chests beating and crushing
the life out of it. Then the gaskets were passed round it and they clung
for a moment to rest and breathe.
It was nothing, or they thought nothing of it, this battle for life with
a monster, just the stowing of a top-gallant sail in dirty weather, and
most likely when they got down the Bo'sw'n would call them farmers for
being such a time over it. Meanwhile they clung idly for a moment,
partly to rest and partly to look at something worth seeing.
The squall was blowing out, there was nothing behind it and away on the
port quarter the almost setting sun had broken through the smother and
was lighting the sea.
There, set in a thousand square acres of snowcapped tourmaline, white as
a gull and beautiful as grace itself, was running a vessel under bare
poles. The two yellow funnels, the cut of the hull, told Ponting what
she was. He had seen her twice before and no sailor who had once set
eyes on her could forget her.
"See that blighter," he yelled across to Raft. "Know her?"
"Should think I did, she's the _Gaston de Paree_--a yacht--seen her in
T'lon."
Then they came down, crawling like weary men, and on deck no one abused
them for their slackness or the time they'd been over their job. The
_Albatross_ was running easy and the Bo'sw'n with others was taken up
with a momentary curiosity over the great white yacht.
No one knew her but Ponting, who had for several years acted as deck
hand on some of the Mediterranean boats.
"I know her," said he ranging up beside the others. "She's the _Gaston
de Paree_, a yot--seen her in T'lon harbour and seen her again at Suez,
she's a thousand tonner, y'can't mistake them funnels nor the width of
them, she's a twenty knotter and the chap that owns her is a king or
somethin'; last time I saw her she was off to the China seas, they say
she's all cluttered up with dredges and dipsy gear, and she mostly
spends her time takin' soundin's and scrabblin' up shell fish and
such--that's his way of amusin' himself."
"Then he must be crazy," said the Bo'sw'n, "but b'God he's got a beauty
under him--what's he doin' down here away?"
"Ax me another," said Ponting. Raft stood with the others, watching the
_Gaston de Paris_ from whose funnels now the smoke was coming festooned
on the wind, then he went below to shed his oilskins and smoke.
She had ceased to interest him.
CHAPTER III
THE GASTON DE PARIS
Old Ponting was right in all his particulars, except one. The owner of
the _Gaston de Paris_ was not a king, only a prince.
Prince Selm, a gentleman like his Highness of Monaco with a passion for
the deep sea and its exploration. The Holy Roman Empire had given his
great grandfather the title of prince, and estates in Thuringia gave him
money enough to do what he pleased, an unfortunate marriage gave him a
distaste for High Civilization, and his scientific bent and passion for
the sea--inherited with a strain of old Norse blood--did the rest.
He had chosen well. Cards, women and wine, pleasure and the glittering
things of life, all these betray one, but the sea, though she may kill,
never leaves a man broken, never destroys his soul.
But Eugene Henry William of Selm for all this sea passion might have
remained a landsman, for the simple reason that he was one of those
thorough souls for whom Life and an Object are synonymous terms. In
other words he would never have made a yachtsman, a creature shifting
from Keil to Cowes and Cowes to Naples according to season, a cup
gatherer and club-house haunter.
But Exploration gave him the incentive and the Musée Océanographique of
Monaco his inspiration, limitless wealth supplied the means.
The _Gaston de Paris_ built by Viguard of Toulon was an ocean going
steam yacht of twelve hundred and fifty tons with engines by Conturier
of Nantes and everything of the latest from Conturier's twin-action
centrifugal bilge pumps to the last thing in sea valves. She was
reckoned by those who knew her the finest sea-going yacht in the world
and she was certainly the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Lafiette, Viguard's chief
designer. Lafiette was more than a designer, he was a creator, the sea
was in his blood giving him that touch of genius or madness, that
something eccentric which made him at times cast rules and formulae
aside.
The decks of the _Gaston de Paris_ ran flush, with little encumbrance
save a deck-house forward given over to electrical and deep sea
instruments.
Forward of the engine room and right to the bulkheads of the fo'c'sle
ran a lower deck reached by a hatch aft of the instrument room. Here
were stowed the dredges and buoys and all the gear belonging to them,
trawl nets and deep sea traps, cable and spare rope and sounding-wire,
harpoons and grancs and a hundred odds and ends, all in order and spick
and span as the gear of a warship.
Aft of the engine-room the yacht was a little palace. Prince Selm would
labour like any of his crew over a net coming in or in an emergency, but
he ate off silver and slept between sheets of exceedingly fine linen.
Though a sailor, almost one might say a fisherman, he was always
Monsieur le Prince and though his hobby lay in the depths of the sea his
intellect did not lie there too. Politics, Literature and Art travelled
with him as mind companions, whilst in the flesh he often managed to
bring off with him on his "outlandish expeditions" more or less pleasant
people from the great world where Civilisation sits in cities, feeding
Art and Philosophy, Science and Literature with the hearts and souls of
men.
The main saloon of the _Gaston de Paris_ fought in all its details
against the idea of shipboard life, the gilt and scrolls of the yacht
decorator, the mirrors, and all the rest of his abominations were not to
be found here, panels by Chardin painted for Madame de Pompadour
occupied the walls, the main lamp, a flying dragon by Benvenuto Cellini,
clutching in its claws a globe of fire, had, for satellites, four torch
bearers of bronze by Claus, a library, writing and smoking room,
combined, opened from the main saloon, and there was a boudoir decorated
in purple and pearl with flower pictures by Lactropius unfaded despite
their date of 1685.
Nothing could be stranger to the mind than the contrast between the
fo'c'sle of the _Albatross_ and the after cabins of the _Gaston_,
nothing, except, maybe, the contrast between a garret in Montmartre or
Stepney and a drawing-room in the Avenue du Trocadéro or Mayfair.
Dinner was served on board the _Gaston de Paris_ at seven, and to-night
the Prince and his four guests, seated beneath the flying dragon of
Cellini and enjoying their soup, held converse together light-heartedly
and with a spirit that had been somewhat lacking of late. Every sea
voyage has its periods of depression due to monotony; they had not
sighted a ship for over ten days, and this evening the glimpse of the
_Albatross_ revealed through the break in the weather had in some
curious way shattered the sense of isolation and broken the monotony.
The four guests of the Prince were: Madame la Comtesse de Warens, an old
lady with a passion for travel, a free thinker, whose mother was a
friend of Voltaire in her youth and whose father had been a member of
the Jacobin club; she was eighty-four years of age, declared herself
indestructible by time, and her one last ambition to be a burial at sea.
She was also a Socialistic-Anarchist, possessed an income of some forty
thousand pounds a year derived from speculations of her late husband
conducted during the war with Germany in 1870, yet was never known to
give a sou to charity; her hands were all but the hands of a skeleton
and covered with jewels, she smoked cigarettes incessantly. She was one
of those old women whose energy seems to increase with age, tireless as
a gnat she was always the last in bed and the first on deck, though
lying in her bunk half the night reading French novels of which she had
a trunkful and smoking her eternal cigarettes.
Beside her sat her niece, Cléo de Bromsart, English on the mother's side
and educated in England, a girl of twenty, unmarried, dark-haired,
fragile and beautiful as a dream. She was one of the old nobility,
without dilution, yet strangely enough with money, for the Bromsarts,
without marrying into trade, had adapted themselves to the new times so
cleverly that Eugène de Bromsart the last of his race had retired from
life leaving his only daughter and the last of her race wealthy, even by
the standard of wealth set in Paris. She was a sportswoman and, despite
her lack of frailty, had led an outdoor life and possessed a nerve of
steel.
Madame de Warens had brought the girl up after she left school, had
laboured over her and found her labour in vain. Cléo had no leanings
towards the People and the opinions of her aunt seemed to her a sort of
disreputable madness bred on hypocrisy. Cléo looked on the lower classes
just as she looked on animals, beings with rights of their own but
belonging to an entirely different order of creation, and one thing
certainly could be said for her--she was honest in her outlook on life.
Beside her sat Doctor Epinard, the ship's doctor, a serious young man
who spoke little, and the fifth at table was Lagross, the sea painter,
who had come for the sake of his health and to absorb the colours of the
ocean. The vision of the _Albatross_ with towering canvas breasting the
blue-green seas in an atmosphere of sunset and storm was with him still
as he sat listening to the chatter of the others and occasionally
joining in. He intended to paint that picture.
It had come to him as a surprise. They had been playing cards when a
quarter-master called them on deck saying that the weather had moderated
and that there was a ship in sight, and there, away across the tumbling
seas, the _Albatross_ had struck his vision, remote, storm surrounded,
and sunlit, almost a vision of the past in these days of mechanism.
"Now tell me, Prince," Madame de Warens was saying, "how long do you
propose staying at this Kerguelen Land of yours?"
"Not more than a week," replied the Prince. "I want to take some
soundings off the Smoky Islands and I shall put in for a day on the
mainland where you can go ashore if you like, but I shan't stay here
long. It is like putting one's head into a wolf's mouth."
"How is that?"
"Weather. You saw that sudden squall we passed through this evening, or
rather you heard it, no doubt, well that's the sort of thing Kerguelen
brews."
"Suppose," said the astute old lady, "it brewed one of those things,
only much worse, and we were blown ashore?"
"Impossible."
"Why?"
"Our engines can fight anything."
"Are there any natives in this place?"
"Only penguins and rabbits."
"Tell me," said Lagross, "that three-master we saw just now, would she
be making for Kerguelen?"
"Oh, no, she must be out of her course and beating up north. She's not a
whaler, and ships like that would keep north of the Crozets. Probably
she was driven down by that big storm we had a week ago. We wouldn't be
where we are only that I took those soundings south of Marion Island."
"And, after Kerguelen, what land shall we see next?" asked the old lady.
"New Amsterdam, madame," replied the Prince, "and after that the Sunda
Islands and beautiful Java with its sun and palm trees."
Mademoiselle de Bromsart shivered slightly. She had been silent up to
this, and she spoke now with eyes fixed far away as if viewing the
picture of Java with its palms and sapphire skies.
"Could we not go there now?" asked she.
"In what way?" asked the Prince.
"Turn the ship round and leave this place behind," she replied.
"But why?"
"I don't know," said she, "perhaps it is what you say about Kerguelen,
or perhaps it was the sight of that big ship all alone out there, but I
feel--" she stopped short.
"Yes--"
"That ship frightened me."
"Frightened you," cried Madame de Warens, "why, Cléo, what is the matter
with you to-night? You who are never frightened. I'm not easily
frightened, but I admit I almost said my prayers in that storm, and you,
you were doing embroidery."
"Oh, I am not frightened of storms or things in the ordinary way," said
the girl half laughing. "Physical things have no power over me, an ugly
face can frighten me more than the threat of a blow. It is a question of
psychology. That ship produced on my mind a feeling as though I had seen
desolation itself, and something worse."
"Something worse!" cried Madame de Warens, "what can be worse than
desolation?"
"I don't know," said Cléo, "It also made me feel that I wanted to be far
away from it and from here. Then, Monsieur le Prince, with his story of
desolate Kerguelen, completed the feeling. It is strong upon me now."
"You do not wish to go to Kerguelen then?" said the Prince smiling as he
helped himself to the entrée that was being passed round.
"Oh, monsieur, it is not a question of my wishes at all," replied the
girl.
"But, excuse me," replied the owner of the _Gaston de Paris_, "it is
entirely a question of your wishes. We are not a cargo boat, Captain
Lepine is on the bridge, he has only to go into his chart house, set his
course for New Amsterdam, and a turn of the wheel will put our stern to
the south." He touched an electric bell push, attached to the table, as
he spoke.
"And your soundings?" asked she.
"They can wait for some other time or some other man, sea depths are
pretty constant."
A quarter-master appeared at the saloon door, came forward and saluted.
"Ask Captain Lepine to come aft," said the Prince. "I wish to speak to
him."
"Wait," said Mademoiselle Bromsart. Then to her host. "No. I will not
have the course altered for me. I am quite clear upon that point. What I
said was foolish and it would pain me more than I can tell to have it
acted upon. I really mean what I say."
He looked at her for a moment and seemed to glimpse something of the
iron will that lay at the heart of her beauty and fragility.
"That will do," said he to the quarter-master. "You need not give my
message."
Madame de Warens laughed. "That is what it is to be young," said she,
"if an old woman like me had spoken of changing our course I doubt if
your quarter-master would have been called, Monsieur. But I have no fads
and fancies, thank heaven, I leave all that to the young women of
to-day."
"Pardon me, madame," said Doctor Epinard speaking for almost the first
time, "but in impressions produced by objects upon the mind there is no
room for the term fancy. I speak of course of the normal mind free of
disease. Furthermore, we talk of objects as things of secondary
importance and the mind as everything. Now I am firmly convinced that
the mind of man, so far from being a thing apart from the objects that
form its environment, is, in fact, nothing else but a mirror or focus
upon which objects register their impressions and that all the thinking
in the world is done not really by the mind but by the objects that form
our thoughts and the reasons, utterly divorced from what we call human
reason, that connect together the objects that form our environment."
"Is this a theory of your own, Epinard?" asked the Prince.
"It is, monsieur, and it may be bad or good but I adhere to it."
"You mean to say that man is composed entirely of environment, past and
present?"
"Yes, monsieur, you have caught my meaning exactly. Past and present.
Man is nothing more than a concretion formed from emanations of all the
objects whose emanations have impinged upon living tissue since, at the
beginning of the world, living tissue was formed. He is the sunset he
saw a million years ago, the water he swam in when he was a fish, the
knight in armour he fought with when he was an ancestor, or rather he is
a concretion of the light, touch and sound vibrations from these and a
million other things. I have written the matter fully out in a thesis,
which I hope to publish some day."
"Well, you may put my name down for a dozen copies," said the Prince,
"for certainly the theory is less mad than some of the theories I have
come across explaining the origin of mind."
"But what has all that to do with the ship?" asked Madame de Warens.
"Simply, madame, that the ship which one looked at as a structure of
canvas and wood, once seen by Mademoiselle de Bromsart, has become part
of her mind, just as it has become part of yours and mine, a logical and
definite part of our minds; now, mark me, there was also the sunset and
the storm clouds, those objects also became part of the mind of
Mademoiselle de Bromsart, and the reasons interlying between all these
objects produced in her a definite and painful impression. They were, in
fact, all thinking something which she interpreted."
"It seemed to me," said the girl, "that I saw Loneliness itself, and for
the first time, and I felt just now that it was following me. It was to
escape from that absurd phantom that I suggested to Monsieur le Prince
that we should alter our course."
"Well," said Madame de Warens, "your will has conquered the Phantom. Let
us talk of something more cheerful."
"Listen!" said Mademoiselle de Bromsart. "It seems to me that the
engines are going slower."
"You have a quick ear, mademoiselle," said the Prince, "they undoubtedly
are. The Captain has reduced speed. Kerguelen is before us, or rather
on our starboard bow, and daybreak will, no doubt, give us a view of it.
We do not want to be too close to it in the dark hours, that is why
speed has been reduced."
Coffee was served at table and presently, amidst the fumes of cigarette
smoke, the conversation turned to politics, the works of Anatole France,
and other absorbing subjects. One might have fancied oneself in Paris
but for the vibrations of the propeller, the heave of the sea, and the
hundred little noises that mark the passage of a ship under way.
Later Mademoiselle de Bromsart found herself in the smoking-room alone
with her host, Madame de Warens having retired to her state-room and the
others gone on deck.
The girl was doing some embroidery work which she had fetched from her
cabin and the Prince was glancing at the pages of the Revue des Deux
Mondes. Presently he laid the book down.
"I was in earnest," said he.
"How?" she asked, glancing up from her work.
"When I proposed altering the course. Nothing would please me more than
to spoil a plan of my own to please you."
"It is good of you to say that," she replied, "all the same I am glad I
did not spoil your plan, not so much for your sake as my own."
"How?"
"I would rather die than run away from danger."
"So you feared danger?"
"No, I did not fear it, but I felt it. I felt a premonition of danger. I
did not say so at dinner. I did not want to alarm the others."
He looked at her curiously for a moment, contrasting her fragility and
beauty with the something unbendable that was her spirit, her soul--call
it what you will.
"Well," said he, "your slightest wish is my law. I have been going to
speak to you for the last few days. I will say what I want to say now.
It is only four words. Will you marry me?"
She looked up at him, meeting his eyes full and straight.
"No," said she, "it is impossible."
"Why?"
"I have a very great regard for you--but--"
"You do not love me?"
She said nothing, going on with her work calmly as though the
conversation was about some ordinary topic.
"I don't see why you should," he went on, "but look around you--how many
people marry for love now-a-days--and those who do, are they any the
happier? I have seen a very great deal of the world and I know for a
fact that happiness in marriage has little to do with what the poets
call love and everything to do with companionship. If a man and woman
are good companions then they are happy together, if not they are
miserable, no matter how much they may love one another at the start."
"Have you seen much of the world?" she raised her eyes again as she
asked the question. "Have you seen anything really of the world? I do
not mean to be rude, but this world of ours, this world of society that
holds us all, is there anything real about it, since nearly everything
in it is a sham? Look at the lives we lead, look at Paris and London and
Berlin. Why the very language of society is framed to say things we do
not mean."
"It is civilization. How else would you have it?"
"I don't know," she replied, "but I do know it is not life. It is
dishonesty. You say that the only happy married people are those that
are good companions, that love does not count in the long run, and you
are right, perhaps, as far as what you call the World is concerned. I
only repeat that the thing you call the World is not the real world, for
love is real, and love is not merely a question of good companionship.
It is an immortal bond between two spirits and death cannot break it."
"You speak as though you were very certain of a thing which, of all
things, is most hidden from us."
"I speak by instinct."
"Well," said the Prince, "perhaps you are right. We have left behind us
the simplicity of the old world, we have become artificial, our life is
a sham--but what would you have and how are we to alter it? We are all
like passengers in a train travelling to heaven knows where; the seats
are well cushioned and the dining-car leaves nothing to be desired, but
I admit the atmosphere is stuffy and the long journey has developed all
sorts of unpleasant traits among the passengers--well, what would you
do? We cannot get out."
"I suppose not," said she.
He rose up and stood for a moment turning over some magazines lying on
the table. He had received his answer and he knew instinctively that it
was useless to pursue the business further.
Then after a few more words he went on deck. The wind had fallen to a
steady blow but the sky was still overcast and the atmosphere was heavy
and clammy and not consistent. It was as though the low lying clouds
dipped here and there to touch the sea. Every now and then the _Gaston
de Paris_ would run into a wreath of fog and pass through it into the
clear darkness of the night beyond.
In the darkness aft of the bridge nothing could be seen but the pale
hint of the bridge canvas and a trace of spars and funnels now wiped out
with mist, now visible again against the night.
The Prince leaned on the weather rail and looked over at the tumble and
sud of the water lit here and there with the gleam of a port light.
Cléo de Bromsart had fascinated him, grown upon him, compelled him in
some mysterious way to ask her to marry him. He had sworn after his
disastrous first experience never to marry again. He had attempted to
break his oath. Was he in love with her? He could scarcely answer that
question himself. But this he knew, that her refusal of him and the
words she had said were filling his mind with quite new ideas.
Was she right after all in her statement that he who fancied himself a
man of the world knew nothing of the world except its shams? Was she
right in her statement that love was a bond between two spirits, a bond
unbreakable by death? That old idea was not new to him, he had played
with it as a toy of the mind constructed for the mind to play with by
the poets.
The new thing was to find this idea in the mind of a young girl and to
hear it expressed with such conviction.
After a while he came forward and went up the steps to the bridge.
Captain Lepine was in the chart room, the first officer was on the
bridge and Bouvalot, an old navy quarter-master, had the wheel.
"We have slowed down," said the Prince.
"Yes, monsieur," replied the first officer, "we are getting close to
land. We ought to sight Kerguelen at dawn."
"What do you think of the weather?"
"I don't think the weather will bother us much, monsieur, that blow had
nothing behind it, and were it not for these fog patches I would ask
nothing better; but then it's Kerguelen--what can one expect!"
"True," said the other, "it's a vile place, by all accounts, as far as
weather is concerned."
He tapped at the door of the chart room and entered.
The chart room of the _Gaston de Paris_ was a pleasant change from the
dark and damp of the bridge. A couch upholstered in red velvet ran along
one side of it and on the couch with one leg up and a pipe in his mouth
the captain was resting himself, a big man of the Southern French navy
type, with a beard of burnt-up black that reached nearly to his eyes.
The Prince, telling him not to move, sat down and lit a cigar. Then they
fell into talk.
Lepine was a sailor and nothing else. Had his character been cut out of
cardboard the line of division between the sailor and the rest of the
world could not have been more sharply marked. That was perhaps why the
two men, though divided by a vast social gulf, were friends, almost
chums.
They talked for half an hour or so on all sorts of subjects connected
with the ship.
"By the way, Lepine," said the Prince suddenly, "It has been the toss up
of a sou that we are not now steering a course for New Amsterdam."
"And how is that, monsieur?"
"Well, Mademoiselle de Bromsart proposed to me at dinner that we should
alter our course, the idea came to her that some misfortune might happen
to us off Kerguelen and, as you know, I am always anxious to please my
guests--well, I called a quarter-master down. I was going to have sent
for you."
"To alter our course?"
"Yes, but Mademoiselle de Bromsart altered her mind. She refused to let
me send for you."
"But what gave the young lady that idea?" asked the Captain.
"That big ship we sighted before dinner."
"The three-master?"
"Yes, there was something about it she did not like."
"Monsieur, what an idea--and what was wrong with it?"
"Oh, it was just a fancy. The sea breeds fancies and superstitions, you
know that, Lepine, for I believe you are superstitious yourself."
"Perhaps, monsieur; all sailors are, and I have had experiences. There
are bad and good ships, just as there are bad and good men, of that I am
sure. Perhaps that three-master was a bad ship." Lepine laughed as
though at his own words. "All the same," he went on, "I don't like
warnings, especially off Kerguelen."
They left the chart house and came out on the bridge.
The wind was still steady but the clouds had consolidated and the night
was pitch black. On the bridge the _Gaston de Paris_ seemed driving into
a solid wall of ebony.
The Prince after a glance into the binnacle was preparing to go down the
bridge steps when a cry from the Look-out made him wheel round.
Suddenly, and as if evolved by magic from the blackness, the vague
spectre of a vast ship shewed up ahead on the port bow making to cross
their course. Thundering along under full canvas without lights and
seemingly blind, she seemed only a pistol shot away.
Then the owner of the _Gaston de Paris_ did what no owner ought ever to
do: seeing Destruction and judging that by a bold stroke it might be
out-leaped, he sprang to the engine room telegraph and flung the lever
to full speed ahead.
CHAPTER IV
DISASTER
Left alone, Mademoiselle de Bromsart finished the all but completed
piece of embroidery in her lap. It did not take her five minutes. Then
she held up the work and reviewed it with lips slightly pursed, then she
rolled it up, rose, and went off to the state-room of Madame de Warens
to bid her good-night.
Madame was sitting up in her bunk reading Maurice Barres' "Greco." The
air of the place was stifling with the fume of cigarettes, and the girl
nearly choked as she closed the door and stood facing the old lady in
the bunk.
"Why don't you smoke, then you wouldn't mind it," cried the latter,
putting her book down and taking off her glasses. "No, I won't have a
port opened, d'you want me to be blown out of my bunk? Sit down."
"No, I won't stay," replied the other, "I just came to say
good-night--and tell you something--He asked me to marry him."
"Who--Selm?"
"Yes."
"And what did you say?"
"I said 'No.'"
"Oh, you did?--and what's the matter with him--I mean what's the matter
with you?"
"How?"
"How! The best match in Europe and you say 'no' to him--a man who could
marry where he pleases and whom he pleased and you say 'no.'
Good-looking, without vices, richer than many a crowned head, second
only to the reigning families--and you say 'no.'"
The old lady was working herself up. This admirer of Anarchasis Clootz
and dilletanti of Anarchism had lately possessed one supreme desire, the
desire to have for niece the Princess Selm.
"I thought you didn't believe in all that," said the girl.
"All what?"
"Titles, wealth and so forth."
"I believe in seeing you happy and well-placed. I was not thinking of
myself--well, there, it's done. There is no use in talking any more, for
I know your disposition. You are hard, mademoiselle, that is your
failing--without real heart. It is the modern disease. Well, that is all
I have to say. I wish you good-night."
She put on her spectacles again.
"Good-night," said the other.
She went out, closed the door, and entered her state-room.
It was the same as Madame de Warens' only larger, a place to fill the
mind of the old-time seafarers with the wildest surprise, for here was
everything that a mortal could demand in the way of comfort and nothing
of the stuffy upholstery that the word "state-rooms" suggests to the
mind of the ordinary traveller.
The crimson velvet, so dear to the heart of the ship furnisher, was
supplanted by ribbed silk, Persian rugs covered the floor, the metal
fittings were of bronze, and worked, where possible, into sea designs:
dolphins, sea-horses, and fucus. There was a writing-table that could be
closed up into the wall so cunningly that no trace was left of where it
had been, a tiny library of slim volumes uniformly bound in amber
leather, a miracle of binding, the work of Grossart of Tours, a map-rack
containing large scale maps of the world, and a tell-tale compass
shewing the course of the _Gaston de Paris_ to whomever cared to read
it. A long mirror let into the bulkhead aft increased the apparent size
of the place. A bath-room and dressing-room lay forward.
Having closed the door she stood for a moment glancing at her reflection
in the mirror. The picture seemed to fascinate her as though it were the
reflection of some stranger. Then, turning from the mirror, she sat down
for a moment on the couch by the door.
She felt disturbed. The words of Madame de Warens had angered her,
producing the effect of a false accusation to which one is too proud to
reply, but the momentary anger had passed, giving place to a craving for
freedom and fresh air. The atmosphere of the state-room felt stifling,
she would go on deck. Then she remembered that she was in a thin evening
dress and that she would have to change.
The two women shared a maid, and she was in the act of stretching out
her hand to the electric bell by the couch to summon the maid, when the
craving to get on deck without delay became so strong that she rose,
went into the dressing-room and, without assistance, changed her gown
for a tweed coat and skirt and her thin evening shoes for a pair of
serviceable boots. Then she slipped on her oilskin and sou'wester and
coming back into the state-room caught a momentary glimpse of herself in
the mirror, a strange contrast to the elegant and black-gowned figure
that had glanced at its reflection only ten minutes before.
She was coming up the saloon companion-way when the engines, easily
heard from here, suddenly began a thunderous pow-wow; the ship lurched
forward, and from the blackness of the open hatch above came a voice
like the sudden clamour of sea-gulls. Then she was flung backwards and
stretched, half-stunned, on the mat at the companion-way foot.
For a moment she did not know in the least what had happened. She
fancied she had slipped and fallen, then, as she scrambled on to her
hands and knees, someone passed her, nearly treading on her, and rushed
up the companion-way to the deck. It was the chief steward. Rising and
holding on to the rail she followed him.
The deck was aslant, and in the windy blackness of the night nothing was
to be seen for a moment; but the darkness was terrific with voices,
voices from forward of the bridge and voices from alongside as though a
hundred drunken sailors were yelling and blaspheming from a quay.
For the tenth of a second the idea of being alongside a quay came to her
with nightmare effect, heightened by a ruffling and booming from the sky
above, a rippling and flapping and thundering like the sound of vast and
tangled wings.
Then a blaze of light shot out, making day.
The arc lamp of the fore-mast, always ready to be used for night work,
had been run up and switched on.
To starboard and stern of the _Gaston de Paris_, a great ship, within
pistol shot of the deck, and with her canvas spilling the wind and
thrashing and thundering, was dipping her bows in the sea. Men were
fighting for the boats, and the stern was so high that more than half of
the rudder shewed like a great door swinging on its hinges. On the
counter in pale letters the word
"_Albatross_"
shewed, and to the mind of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in
that calm statement, those commonplace letters written upon destruction.
Clinging to the hatch combing she saw, now, as a person sees in a dream,
sailors rushing and struggling aft along the slanting main deck. The
engines had ceased working but the dynamos were running on steam from
the main boilers, and through the noises that filled the night the
sewing machine sound of them threshed like a pulse. What had happened,
what was happening, she did not know. The great ship to port seemed
sinking but the _Gaston de Paris_ seemed safe, but for the horrible
slant of the decks; she called out to the sailors, now clustered here
and there by the boat davits, but her voice blew away on the wind, she
saw Prince Selm, he was struggling aft along the slippery sloping deck,
clutching at the bulwarks as he came, he seemed like a man engaged in
some fantastic game--an unreal figure, now he was on the deck on all
fours, now up again, clutching men by the shoulders, shaking them,
shouting. She could hear his voice. The starboard boats were unworkable
owing to the list to port. She did not know that, she only knew, and now
for the first time, that the _Gaston de Paris_ was in fearful danger.
And instantly the thought came to her of the old woman below in her bunk
and, on the thought, the mad instinct to rush below and save her.
Holding on to the woodwork of the hatch she was crawling towards the
opening when blackness hit her like a blow between the eyes. The arc
lamp had gone out, the dynamos had ceased running.
On the stroke of the darkness the _Gaston de Paris_ heeled slightly
deeper, flinging her to her knees, and as she hung, clutching the
woodwork, she heard her name.
It was the Prince's voice. She answered, and at once on her answer a
hand seized her cruelly as a vice. It caught her by the shoulder. She
felt herself dragged along, buffeted, lifted, cast down--then nothing
more.
CHAPTER V
VOICES IN THE NIGHT
The boat tackle of the _Gaston de Paris_ was the latest patent
arrangement for lowering boats in a hurry; every boat was provisioned,
and the water casks left nothing to be desired, there were frequent
inspections and boat drills. Yet when the _Gaston de Paris_ foundered
only three souls were saved.
The starboard boats, owing to the list, could not be lowered at all;
every boat had its canvas cover on, which did not expedite matters. The
patent tackle developed defects in practise, and, to crown all, the men
panicked owing to the sudden darkness that fell on them like a clap on
the extinction of the electric light. The port quarter-boat into which
the girl had been flung had two men in her and was lowered away by
Prince Selm, the doctor and the first officer; panic had herded the rest
of the hands towards the pinnace and forward boats, and the pinnace,
over-crowded, was stoved by the sea as soon as she was water-bourne. The
other boats never left their davits, they went with the ship when the
decks opened and the boilers saluted the night with a column of coloured
steam and a clap of thunder that resounded for miles.
The whole tragedy from impact to explosion lasted only seven minutes.
The two men in the boat with the girl had shoved off like demons and
taken to the oars as soon as the falls were released. If they had not,
being so short-handed for the size of the boat, they would have been
stoved; as it was they were nearly wrecked by a balk of timber from the
explosion. It missed them by a short two fathoms, drenching them with
spray, and then the night shut down pierced by voices, voices of men
swimming and crying for help.
The rowers did not know each other. The bow oar shouted to the stern.
"Is that you Larsen?"
"No, Bompard, and you?"
"La Touche--Row--God! Listen, there's a chap ahead."
The cries ahead ceased, and the boat bumped on something that duddered
away under it and sank.
"He's gone, whoever he is," cried Bompard. "No use hunting for him.
Listen, there's more." Voices shrill and voices bubbling came through
the blackness from here and from there. The men tried to locate them and
rowed now in this direction, now in that--always wrong. Once a voice
sudden and shrill and close to the boat cried "A moi," and at the same
instant Bompard's oar struck something, but they found nothing, the
voice had ceased.
They could see, now, the waves like spectres evolving themselves from
the night, a vision touching the very limit of dimness, and now as they
entered a mist patch--nothing. The voices to port and starboard were
ceasing, one by one--being blotted out. Then silence fell, broken only
by the sound of the oars. La Touche shouted and shouted again, but there
came no response. Then came Bompard's voice. "Is that hooker gone, too?"
"Curse her, yes. I was the lookout. Sailing without lights."
"This woman seems dead."
"It's the girl. I heard her squeal out as they hove her in. Let her lie.
Well, this is a start."
"A black job, but we're out of it, so far."
"Ay, as far as we've got--as far as we've got. Well, there's no use
rowing, there's no sea to hurt her, let her toss."
The oars came in and the fellows slithered from their seats on to the
bottom boards. Ballasted so the boat rode easy. They lay like shivering
dogs, grumbling and cursing and then, as they lay, the talk went on.
"Mon Dieu! What a thing--but we've grub and water all right."
"Ay, the boats are all right for that."
There was a long silence and then La Touche began in a high complaining
voice:
"I was lookout, but it was not my fault, that I swear. I saw nothing
till a big three-master broke out of the smother making to cross our
bows, no lights shewing, snoring along asleep. Then I shouted. The
bridge had seen her too and put the engines full speed ahead. They'd
mistaken the distance, thought to clear her. I got aft. Hadn't reached
the port alley way when the smash came. It was all the fault of those
fools on the bridge."
"Who knows," came Bompard's voice. "Things happen and what is to be must
be. Well, they're all gone a hundred fathoms deep and here we are
drifting about with a dead woman. I'd sooner have any other cargo if I
was given my choice."
"Sure she's dead?"
"Ay, she's dead sure enough by the way she's lying, not a breath in
her."
Neither man suggested that she should be cast over. She ballasted the
boat, and for Bompard she was something to lean against.
The French mercantile marine is divided into two great classes, the
northerners and southerners. The man from the north is a Ponantaise, the
man from the south a Moco.
Bompard was a Moco, La Touche a Ponantaise. They talked and talked,
repeating themselves, cursing the "hooker," the Bridge and the
steersman. Once La Touche, grown hysterical, seemed choking against
tears.
Then after a while, conversation died out. They had nothing more to talk
about. The boat rode easy. There was nothing to do, and these men blunt
to life and sea-hardened so that to them all things came in the hour's
work, nodded off, La Touche curled up in the bow, Bompard with his
grizzled head on the breast of Mademoiselle de Bromsart.
CHAPTER VI
DAWN
The girl was not dead as Bompard imagined, she had been stunned and had
passed from that condition into the pseudo-sleep that follows profound
excitement.
She was awakened by a flick of spray on her face, a touch from the great
sea that had claimed her for its own.
Lying as she was she could see nothing but the ribbed sides of the boat,
the grey sky above, and a gull with domed wings and down-curved head,
poised, as though suspended on the end of a string. It screamed at her,
shifted its position, and then passed, as though blown away on the wind.
She sat up. Bompard had drawn away from her and was lying curled up on
his side. La Touche on his back, forward, shewed nothing but his knees;
across the gunnel lay the sea, desolate in the dawn, turbulent, yet
hard and mournful as a view of slated roofs after rain.
She had never seen the sea so close before, she had never smelt its
heart and the savour of its soul; bitter, fresh, new and ever renewed by
the blowing wind.
The whole tragedy of the night was alive in her mind as a picture, but
it seemed the picture of what another person had seen. Her past life,
her own personality, seemed vague and unconnected with her as the past
life and personality of another person. This was reality. Reality new,
terrific, pungent as that which the soul may experience on awakening
after death.
She knew, as though the desolate sea had told her, that the great yacht
was gone and everyone on board of her; yet the fact, perhaps from its
very enormity, failed to realize itself fully in her mind. Then, in a
flash and horribly clearly, came the picture of her immediate
environment on board the _Gaston de Paris_, quite little things and
things more important: the silver-plated taps of the bath in the
bath-room, adjoining her cabin, the silk curtains of her bunk, the
hundred and one trifles that made for comfort and ease. She saw the
cabin servants and the face of the chief steward, a fat pale-faced man,
a typical _maître d'hôtel_; the dinner of the night before, when the
people seemed to her phantoms and the food, table equipage, knives,
forks and spoons, realities.
All these things stood forth against the blankness and desolation of the
sea, the sea she could touch by dipping her hand over the gunnel, the
sea that had stripped her of everything but life and body, the dress and
boots she wore and the yellow oilskin coat that covered her. Her hand
resting on the gunnel shewed her that she still wore her rings,
exquisite rings of emerald, ruby and diamonds, fresh washed with spray.
They held her eyes as her mind, swaying just as the boat swayed to the
swell, tried to re-construct yesterday and to feel.
Horror, pity for the fate of the others, the sense of the great disaster
that had happened to the _Gaston de Paris_, of these only the latter
possessed any vitality in her mind. The feeling of unreality destroyed
her grip upon all else.
Her mind was subdued to her own condition. The hard angles of the
woodwork against which she leaned and the spray upon her face, the boat
and the men in it, the sharp cut wave tops--these were real, with an
appalling reality.
It was as though she had never come across a real thing before, and
across her mind came a vague, vague recognition of that great truth that
real things bruise one, eat at one, try to make one their own, once they
manage to break down the barrier of custom that separates the false from
the true; that quite common things have a power greater than the power
of mind, that only amidst the falsity of civilised life and the stage
are the properties subordinate to the persons and emotions of the
actors.
At this moment Bompard, suddenly moving in his sleep, roused himself and
sat up. His rough, weather beaten face was expressionless for a moment,
then his eyes fell on the girl and recognition seemed to come to him.
"Mon Dieu," cried the old fellow as if addressing some unseen person.
"'Tis all true then--" Then, as though remembering something--"but how
is mademoiselle alive?"
"I don't know," said the girl, unconscious as to what he was referring
to. "I know you, I have seen you often on deck--who is the other man?
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 pushing 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 button whether the lady were alive
or not. He had been dreaming that he was in a tavern, just raising a
glass 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 shipped 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.
"I'd never thought to set tooth in a biscuit again when that smash came
last night," said Bompard addressing no one in particular.
"I wasn't thinking of biscuits," said La Touche, "I was bowled over in
the alley-way. You see, I was running, so it took me harder. What set me
running I don't know, my legs took care of themselves--I was just
leaning like this, see, on the look out and between two blinks there was
the hooker crossing our course or making that way. She'll clear us,
maybe, said I to myself, then the engines went full speed and I knew we
were done. Then I cleared aft, running, with no thought in my mind but
to get out of the way, dark, too, but I didn't barge against nothing,
till the smash came, and I went truck over keel in the alley-way."
"I was coming up the cabin stairs," said Cléo, "and something seemed to
knock me down. Then when I got on deck the light was put on and I saw a
great ship on the right hand side; she seemed sinking, but I read her
name, she was quite close. Then the light went out and someone caught me
and threw me--I don't know where, but it must have been into this boat."
"That was it," said Bompard, talking and eating at the same time, "us
two was in the boat."
"I thought it was Larsen," cut in La Touche. "Larsen helped me to get
the canvas off her, that was when the electric was on--what became of
Larsen?"
"Lord knows," said Bompard. "I scrambled into her just as the light was
shut off, then the chaps on deck chucked the lady in. Next thing we were
fending her off from the ship. I was shouting to the chaps on deck to
jump and we'd pick them up, we'd got the oars out then. I tell you I was
fuddled up for I'd got it in my head that the hooker was to port of us
though I'd seen her with my own eyes to starboard. I was thinking we'd
be taken down with the suck of her and I was bent on getting ahead of
her."
"I didn't hear you shouting to the fellows on deck," said La Touche,
"but I heard you shouting to me to row. Then when we'd got her away a
bit the _Gaston_ blew up."
"Blew up," said the girl.
"The boilers," said Bompard, "they lifted the decks off her. She must
have gone like a stone."
"So you think no one at all escaped but us?"
Neither of the men replied for a moment, then La Touche said: "There
wasn't another boat could have got away."
The sun was well risen now, the clouds were high and breaking and the
far away land shewed up, vast in the distance, with a white line of
snow-covered peaks against the sky, desolate as when Kerguelen first
sighted them.
Cléo with her eyes fixed across the leagues of tumbling tourmaline
tinted sea almost forgot the others. That was the place where the wind
was bearing them to, a place where there was nothing. Neither hotels nor
houses nor huts, nor men nor women, a place where no landing-stage would
receive them, no voice welcome them. Her throat worked for a second
convulsively as she battled with the quite new things that the far off
mountains were telling her.
It was now and not till now that she recognised fully what Fate had done
to her. It was now and not till now that she saw Time before her as a
thing from which all the known features had been deleted.
"Mademoiselle's bath is quite ready."
"Mademoiselle, the first gong has sounded."
Oh, the day--the day with its hundred phases and divisions, the
breakfast hour, the luncheon hour, the hour that brought afternoon tea,
the dresses that went with each phase, the emotions and interests, and
changing forms of being, the day which made a person change to its light
and the person of ten o'clock in the morning quite different from the
person of noon--this thing which we talk of as the day appeared before
her now as what it really is, life itself, as civilized men know life, a
thing outside ourselves yet of ourselves and without which the circling
of the sun is as the circling of a pointer on a blank dial--. This thing
was gone.
La Touche had got more forward and was smoking and, though the wind was
with them, a faint scent of tobacco smoke came on the spill of the wind
from the sail. Bompard was chewing, spitting occasionally to starboard
and wiping his mouth with the back of his bronzed tattooed hand.
The vague scent of the tobacco threaded up all sorts of things in the
girl's mind: Madame de Warens, the streets of Paris, the deck of the
yacht. She remembered the piece of embroidery work she had been engaged
on last night, and then a scrap of conversation she had overheard
between the doctor and the artist towards the end of dinner, they were
talking of the passéistes and futurists, of the work of Pablo Picasso,
of Sunyer, of Boccioni and Durio, arguing with extraordinary passion
about the work of these people.
"There's weather or something over there," said La Touche who had
slipped down and was seated on the bottom boards with his back to a
thwart; he nodded his head towards Kerguelen.
Around one of the highest peaks a lead-coloured cloud had wrapped itself
turban-wise, and even as they looked the cloud turban increased in
volume and height, mournful and monstrous as some djin-born vision of
the Arabian story-tellers.
"That's snow," said Bompard, "and by the twist of it it's in a
whirlwind."
"Bon Dieu, what a place," said La Touche.
"You may say that," said Bompard, "but that's nothing, it's when we come
to make a landing we'll find what we are against."
"Oh, we've got so far we'll finish it," said La Touche.
Then began a dismal argument, full of words and repetitions but with few
ideas, and from the trend of it the curious fact appeared that La
Touche, the ship's grouser and dismal James, was taking the optimistical
side, whilst Bompard, generally cheerful, was the pessimist.
La Touche's optimism was, perhaps, the outcome of fear. What they had
gone through was nothing to the prospect of having to make a landing on
that tremendous coast, simply because what they had gone through had
come on them suddenly. This thing had to be faced in cold blood. The
coward in La Touche refused to face it fully, refused to face the fact
that with this swell and with all the chances of uncharted and unknown
reefs and rocks the risk was appalling. He grew angry.
"Don't be a coward over it," said he. That set Bompard off, and for a
moment the girl thought they would have come to blows. Then it passed
and they were as friendly as before, just as though nothing had
happened.
Their talk and the whole business had been conducted as though the girl
were not there. In the few hours since daybreak, quarter deck and
fo'c'sle had vanished. They had become welded into one community, all
equal, and the lady was no longer the lady. There was no hint of
disrespect, no hint of respect. They were all equal, equal sharers in
the chances of the sea.
More, the sex standard seemed to have vanished with the social. Nothing
remained but the human, for that is the rule with the open boat at sea.
When they lowered the sail for screening purposes, when they raised it
again, it was all the same, for the human level is above all little
things.
Towards noon and with the coast now closer and well-defined, La Touche
sighted something ahead. It was a rock, high and pointed like a black
spire protruding from the sea and standing there like an outpost of the
land.
"Had we better give it a wide berth?" asked La Touche. "Maybe there's
more near it."
"The sea is running smooth enough by it," said Bompard. "I don't see
breakers, and we don't draw anything to speak of." He held on.
The sun was shewing through breaks in the high clouds and its light fell
on the water and the rock, pied with roosting guillemots. As the boat
drew near the guillemots gave tongue. The sound came against the wind
fierce and complaining, antagonistic like the voice of loneliness crying
out against them and telling them to be gone--be gone--be gone!
Cléo, as they passed, saw the green water sliding up and falling from
the polished black rock surface. The sight seemed to bring the hostile
coast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying of the guillemots as it died
away behind them seemed a barrier passed, never to be re-crossed.
CHAPTER VII
THE COAST
And now, away at sea and leagues from the coast they were approaching,
vast islands disclosed themselves suddenly through the sea haze,
standing like giants waist deep in the ocean, whilst the coast itself
with its cliffs and rocks of black basalt and dolerite shewed clear,
extraordinarily clear, with every detail defined in the sunlight, from
the rifts in the basalt to the gulls blowing about in legions and the
great sea-geese hovering and fishing.
The coast was ferocious, and the whole country from the sea foam to the
foothills looked tumbled and new, with the newness of infinite
antiquity. The last thunders of creation seemed scarcely to have died
away, the last throe scarcely to have ceased, leaving million-ton rock
cast on rock and the new, shear-cut cliffs spitting back their first
taste of the bitter sea.
"There is nowhere to land," said the girl. She was shuddering as a dog
shudders when overstrung.
"Ay, it's a brute beast of a place," said Bompard, "well, we must nose
along on the lookout. There's no coast but hasn't some landing-place
where a boat can push in. Y'see it's not like a ship. A boat can go
where a ship can't."
He shifted the helm a bit, keeping the coast parallel to them on the
starboard side.
"Might those islands be better to go to?" asked she, "they couldn't be
worse than that."
La Touche suddenly grew excited. "Bon Dieu," cried he, "what a thing to
be saying! Those islands, nothing but rocks--nothing but rocks. Here
there is land, at all events, good land one can put one's foot on; out
there there's nothing but rocks. Rather than go out there I would swim
ashore--I would--"
"Oh, close up," said Bompard, "don't talk about swimming--maybe you'll
have to."
"One can always drown," said La Touche.
It was Bompard who next broke the silence.
"I've been over cliffs worse than those, for gulls eggs," said he, "take
one coast with another, coasts are pretty much the same, you get bad
bits and easy bits, that is all."
La Touche said nothing.
As they drew on the great islands out at sea ranged themselves more
definitely and the tremendous coast to starboard shewed more clearly its
deep cut canons, its sea arches and absolute desolation.
The sea had fallen, though the wind still held steady, and this surface
calmness, under-run by a gentle swell, served only to emphasize the
vastness of the view. The island seemed immensely remote and immense in
size, the far snow-covered mountains the mountains of a land where
giants had lived and from which they had departed countless ages ago.
Oyster catches passed the boat with their melancholy cry, but the
fishing gannets and the swimming puffins seemed scarcely to heed the
intruders. Puffins swimming a biscuit toss away as though they had never
learned the fear of man.
They had drawn nearer shore so that the boom of the swell in the caves
and on the rocks came to them with the crying of the shore birds;
passing a headland like a vast lizard they opened a beach curved like
the new moon and seven miles from horn to horn.
"There's our landing-place," cried Bompard, "big enough to pick and
choose from."
"Lord!" shouted La Touche. "Look over there--moving rocks!"
He pointed half a mile away to seaward.
Bompard looked.
"Those crest rocks, they're whales," said he.
A pair of whales shewed, standing up, coupling in the chill blue grey
water, a miraculous sight, as though they had entered a world where the
original things of life still moved and had their being untroubled by
man and untouched by Time.
Bompard shifted the helm, and the boat, heading for the shore and no
longer running before the wind, moved less easily, shipping an
occasional dash of spray.
The change of movement, the dash of spray, the altered course were to
the girl like the turning of a corner. Running with the wind and with a
parallel shore the boat was the world and the coast and island a
panorama. With the twist of the helm Reality made the coast a
destination. Up to this moment the uncertainty of whether they could
land had held her mind, up to this moment all sorts of vague
possibilities, the chance of meeting a ship, the chance of being blown
out to sea, the chance of this or that had come between her and the
realisation of the fact that this prison was hers.
The monstrosity of the idea stood fully revealed only now on that beach
where there was nothing but sand, nothing but rocks, nothing but gulls.
Close in now Bompard let go the sheet and they unstepped the mast, the
boat rocking in the trough of the swell. Then they got the oars out.
As they bent to their work and over the creak of the leather in the
rowlocks the rumble and fume of the seven mile beach came mixed with the
yelping and mewing of the gulls. The boat made slow progress, then a few
yards from the surf line it hung for a moment till the rowers suddenly
gave way and moving like a relieved arrow she came on the crest of a
wave, then the oars came in with a crash and the two men tumbling out
dragged her nose high and dry. They helped the girl out and as they
pulled the boat higher she stood, the wind flicking her oilskin coat
about her and the spindrift blowing in her face.
PART II