THE WOOLEY
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 shift 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 ship couldn't stand it."
"And what ship 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 ships 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.
Cléo'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.
"Are there any other things in the locker?" asked the girl.
"Oh, Mon Dieu, yes," replied the old fellow. "There's a lot of truck,
but it's no use to us."
"Let's go and see," said Cléo. She rose up and came down the beach
followed by the others. The wind from the mountains died away but the
sea torment remained and, though the tide was beginning to ebb, the
spray of the waves almost reached the boat.
It had been listed to one side by the Wooley but was undamaged and the
forward locker was still open as it had been left by the careless
Bompard.
It was one of the boats used for fishing and deep sea work, hence the
contents of the locker.
The steel head of a two pronged fish spear, a fisherman's knife in its
sheath with belt, a paternoster, invaluable for the fathoms of fishing
line attached, a small American axe with the head vaselined, a canvas
housewife with sail-needles, a few darning needles and some pack thread,
and a number of odds and ends including some extra heavy lead sinkers.
Bompard looked on apathetically and La Touche stood with his hands in
his pockets as the girl fished the things out one by one, placing them,
some on the sands and some on the thwarts of the boat.
The things seemed to have no interest for the men. Accustomed all their
lives to being looked after as far as shelter and food were concerned
they seemed absolutely helpless in front of new conditions. Men are like
that, especially men of the people, and when you read of Crusoes and
their wonderful doings on desert islands you read Romance.
The quick, trained mind of the girl seemed to see clearly where they
could scarcely see at all, she had imagination and she was a woman--that
is to say a being more gifted than man, with prevision in affairs purely
material.
Bompard did not see any use in the axe and said so. The girl, with her
hand resting on the gunnel of the boat, stood like a housekeeper trying
to explain to a mere male creature the use of some household implement.
"We will want a fire and an axe will chop wood," said she.
"Ay, and where are you to get the wood?" asked La Touche. "There's not a
tree on this blasted place, nor the sign of one."
"Well, we'll have to look--there may be trees inland--there's sure to be
bushes of some sort--anyhow we will take these things up to the cave,
they will be safer there."
The baling tin of the boat caught her eye, she included it amongst her
prizes.
This baling tin, like a psychological instrument, exhibited the mind of
Bompard as though that said mind had been scooped out and placed in it.
To him it was a baling tin; here there were no boats to be baled
out--where was the use of it?
To the woman it was a possible pot to boil things in if they could get a
fire and things to boil.
She explained and Bompard saw the light. La Touche saw it, too, but
promptly pointed out that they had no fire and nothing to boil. He
seemed to find an odious satisfaction in the fact, a satisfaction which
Bompard faintly reflected, and for a moment the girl seemed to glimpse
in the two men a lethargy of mind almost unthinkable. A lethargy and
laziness, mulish, and kicking at anything that disturbed it, that
actually fought against betterment because betterment meant exercise of
intellect and action.
She felt angry with them, just as a grown person feels angry with lazy
children, and putting the belt with the knife round her waist and
picking up some of her treasures she ordered the others to follow with
the rest.
When they had been placed in the cave with the provisions, Bompard,
after his great labours, cut himself some tobacco and La Touche lit his
pipe. Then they sat down at their cave opening to smoke and rest
themselves whilst the girl, who could not keep still, went back to the
boat to explore the other lockers and see if by chance anything else of
a useful nature might be found. The two men seated smoking at the cave
mouth watched her as she went. She felt their eyes upon her and guessed
that they were discussing her, but she did not mind.
The ceaseless activity of old Madame de Warens seemed to have descended
on her through the air of Kerguelen. The will that Prince Selm had
divined in her had been aroused; the surroundings seemed to call her to
action from every side; the past and the future seemed phantoms before
the tremendous and insistent present. Fate could perhaps have broken her
spirit only in one way, by casting her upon the sordid. If she had been
socially shipwrecked and thrown onto a Paris slum she might have gone
under. Here where everything was clean, where the air was life, where
nothing was sordid, she swam; here she was miraculously filled with a
new energy and an extraordinary new interest as though she were peeping
at things for the very first time.
The forward locker was now empty, she hunted in the others and
discovered two more Maconochie tins that Bompard had overlooked, some
cotton waste, a roll of thick copper wire and a bradawl.
She collected the lot and brought them up to the cave before which her
companions were seated.
She handed them to La Touche, who, without getting up, leaned back and
pushed them as far into the cave as he could reach, then he resumed his
pipe whilst Cléo standing and shading her eyes looked away up and down
the beach as though measuring its possibilities.
"I found a lot of things down there this morning before the tide was
high," said she. "There were star-fish, big ones like what I have seen
on the beach at Bordighera; the Italian people eat them. I'm sure there
must be lots of food to be found here on the beach. Then there is a big
break in the cliffs lower down that seems to lead inland. I think the
best thing we can do is to start now and hunt about and see what we can
find. You two can go inland, and I will go along the beach. It's
absolutely necessary to find any sort of food, and wood to make a fire."
The smokers were disposed to argue.
Yes, it was quite true, one must look round, but there was grub enough
for a month and there was plenty of time before them. Then La Touche
began to argue about star-fish. He had never heard of people eating
star-fish. If they were to be condemned to eat stuff like that it would
be better to quit. One might have fancied from his tone that it was
Cléo's fault that such a suggestion should be made.
Cléo listened patiently and Bompard sat evidently approving. It was
almost as though the two were in league against her, just as children
get in league against an adult who insists on unpleasant duties or
uncongenial food.
But a will was at work stronger than theirs and presently, tapping out
their pipes, they rose up. La Touche, at her direction, placed the new
found Maconochie tins, the cotton waste, the bradawl and wire with the
rest of the stores, far back in the cave, and then, following her, they
lumbered along down the beach in the direction of the cliff break like
two schoolboys after a governess.
The cliff break was a narrow gully piercing the basalt and bending upon
itself; here they parted, the men striking up the gulley and the girl
continuing her way along the beach.
"And be sure to look out for some wood," she cried after them, "any sort
of wood."
"Ay, ay," said Bompard, "we'll be on the look out right enough."
Then they vanished and she pursued her way alone, picking up things as
she went, turning over shells and thinking of her companions.
The wind had fanned up again to a strong breeze but the sound of the
surf had fallen with the receding tide and the stretch of wet sand
below high tide mark was strewn with huge kelp ribbons, masses of
seaweed, shells, all empty, cuttle fish bones and the star-fish
despised of La Touche.
Then she came upon something that gave her a grue, it seemed at first
like a white rock, it was a skull. The skull of some enormous creature
half-bedded in the sand just above the tide mark, possibly cast up in
some storm. She thought it might be the skull of a whale and as she
stood looking at it, suddenly, the desolation around came in upon her
with the fact that she was absolutely alone.
Suppose the men lost their way--suppose that they never came back? The
thought clutched her heart like a hand. To be here, alone, absolutely
alone, forever!
For a moment panic seized her and the wild impulse came upon her to turn
and run back to the cave. Then she mastered herself, fighting down the
surging in her throat, and continuing her way steadily and with renewed
strength. She had not cast the thought away, she had mastered it and as
she went she contemplated it as a victor contemplates the dead body of
an assailant.
Then she saw the penguins, she had not noticed them before, they were
drawn up in long lines at the base of the cliff and the sight of them
destroyed the desolation just as the skull had crystallized it around
her.
A great pow-wow was going on amongst the penguins. Three birds,
separate from the others, were standing, two facing one another bowing
and discussing something, the third standing by, putting in a word now
and then and now and then coming right between the disputants.
She watched them for awhile and then went on. She had no time to waste.
The thought of coming back empty handed after all her talk to the men
pursued her. She was looking for food and had found none--nothing but
the star-fish.
The gulls evidently found plenty of food. But for a human being there
seemed nothing, and as she went on and on the thought of what would
happen when those tins in the cave were empty came at her just as the
terror of finding herself alone had come, and this thought was not to be
combated by an effort of will simply because it was born of Reason.
Her clear and practical mind saw starvation, over-leaped the slender
food barrier that held hunger only a month away from them and wandered
in a wilderness where nothing was.
She had reached the rock surface now that stretched away level and
smooth, broken by cracks and pot holes and strewn here and there with
weed. The cliffs had fallen away, giving a view of the broken country
and the mountains with their snow-covered tops, immense, wrapped in
distance under the dull grey day, remote, yet clearly defined in that
air, crystal clear as the air of Iceland.
It was like looking at Silence herself, silence set off and explained
by the beach noises, the sound of the surf, the calling of the terns,
the mewing of the great white gulls.
She saw Kerguelen as it is, as it was, as it ever will be. Standing
there alone she saw it for the first time in all its utter nakedness. If
no food were to be found on the busy beach, what food could be found in
that carved, silent, cruel land where not a single tree shewed in all
the miles of desolation?
A stealthy scraping sound behind her made her wheel round.
Up from a rock pond which she had passed without examining had risen a
crab, its body was not bigger than the two fists of a man put together,
yet it moved standing high up like a spider on slender stilts that if
stretched out would have measured four feet or more. She watched it with
dilated eyes as it scrambled and hurried along, vanishing at last like a
spectre in some cleft of the rock. There was something of a skeleton
about it as well as something of a spider, it was like a caricature of
food drawn by Famine. It made the whole beach hideous for a moment and
it made the food hunter almost afraid to go on. She crushed the fear and
went on, reaching a place where the rocks ceased and a broad level of
sand stretched to where the rocks began again and further on the river
ran down.
Where the sand met the further rocks a huge conical stone stood with a
gull roosting on its top, and just as a person fixes on some object as
the limit of his walk she determined to go as far as this stone and then
turn back.
As she drew close to it the gull flapped its wings and flew away and she
saw that the thing was not a stone but the figure-head of a ship, the
form of a woman with ample breasts, broken and scarred by years of
weather and stained with the droppings of gulls. The arms were gone, but
the great face remained almost in its entirety staring away across the
sands and the sea.
It had once worn a crown, but the crown was broken away all but a little
bit on the left side of the head and it had an appearance of life that
almost daunted the girl as she stood looking, watching it, and listening
to the singing sound of the beach echoes and the mewing and crying of
the gulls.
Then as she moved closer her foot struck on something half buried in the
sand, it was a balk of timber, ships timber was all about, sanded over,
and in places half uncovered. Here was firewood enough for twenty years.
In the figure-head alone there was enough to supply their wants for a
long time to come.
She sat down to rest on a projecting piece of this timber near the
figure. Close up to it like this it lost its touch of life and became
simply a block of wood, and from this point she could see the beach over
which she had travelled stretching away and away to the Lizard Point
with the foam breaking around it and flown about by the never-resting
gulls.
She had come nearly three miles and she had found something worth
finding by just keeping on.
She remembered the spectre crab. It had nearly turned her back
empty-handed, but she had kept on and she registered that fact deeply in
her mind, dwelling on it with a pleasure she had never felt before.
Then she fell to thinking of the ship that all this belonged to and the
storm that must have driven it here. The weeds of the high tide mark did
not come within ten feet of the wreckage, so the waves must have come a
hundred feet or more beyond where she was sitting. Perhaps it was at
night with all this coast roaring in the darkness and the wind yelling
above the shouting of the waves. And all that must have happened years
ago, to judge by the work of the weather on the once gaily painted woman
and the depth the timbers had sunk in the sand.
She rose up, and before starting back she glanced inland towards the
mountains across the broken country.
Then she shaded her eyes.
Beyond the fringe of the beach and amongst the high broken rocks stood a
cross.