THE QUARREL
Next morning broke fine. She was awakened by voices quarrelling and came
out to find a breezy and absolutely cloudless day, with the sea running
smooth and the sunlight on the far islands.
The two men, who had fallen out over some trifle, were wrangling like
fish-women, Bompard having the worst of it, as his ineffectual southern
oaths were no match for the language of the other.
The girl stood looking at La Touche, but he seemed not to mind in the
least.
Then she turned away and walked down to the boat.
She heard Bompard say: "There, you have sent her off, talking like
that," and what La Touche replied she could not hear, but she guessed it
was something not complimentary to Bompard or herself.
The boat was half full of rain-water. She rinsed her hands in it, then,
standing with the warm sun upon her, she almost forgot the men, looking
at the purple islands and the gulls like new minted gold and the great
arch of the bay lined out with a thread of creamy foam.
After a while, turning round, she saw that Bompard was lighting a fire
with the remains of the wood and, coming up, she helped in the business.
He had arranged the little fire between pieces of rock so as to make a
stand for the kettle, and La Touche was opening the hermetically sealed
canister of tea with his knife; neither man was speaking and the meal
passed off almost in silence.
She felt that any moment the quarrel might break out again and her
instinct was to get away from them.
She had left the fisherman's knife and belt in her cave; she went to the
cave and strapped the belt around her waist. The boat hook was lying on
the sand; she picked it up and, carrying it, walked away down the beach
in the direction of the cache.
The boat hook was a weapon of sorts and it was better out of the men's
way; the knife was different. It had come to her that in this place it
was better to be armed and she determined always to wear it.
But no sounds of quarrelling followed her, only the quarrelling of the
gulls, and half a mile away, looking back, she saw that the men had
separated. La Touche was standing by the boat and Bompard was walking
towards the Lizard point. She sat down to rest for a moment and she
watched the figure of Bompard. It grew smaller and smaller till it
reached the point, then it vanished over the rocks.
She saw La Touche walk away towards the caves; he disappeared, and the
beach, now destitute of life, lay sung to by the sea and flown over by
the gulls. Nothing speaking of man lay there but the boat that looked
like a toy cast there by a child. It held her eyes, focussed her
thoughts, and became the centre of a sudden longing, a desire soul
searching as the desire for water--the desire for civilization, for the
things and people that she knew.
Her companions had become horrible to her. To go on living with them
seemed appalling. The rocks, the sea, the gulls, even the rain, all
these fitted with her mind--they seemed in some way familiar, but with
the men she had nothing in common.
It is worse to be wrecked on a social state than on a desert shore. She
was wrecked on both.
She recognised surely that at the rate things were going she would soon,
so far from being above her companions, be below them on account of her
weakness. She recognised that superiority of mind would count little
after a while with these minds, incapable of distinguishing grades, or
values, beyond money value and the distinction of master from man, and
that sex so far from being a protection would be a danger.
Her brave mind allowed itself to be borne along for a while on these
currents of thought, then it reacted against them, repeating again the
old formula that to think, here, on other things than the moment and
the material was to die or go distraught.
She got up and shifted her position, sitting with her back towards the
boat.
She could see the penguins, now, drilling beneath the cliff and beyond
the penguins the figure-head of the ship and beyond that the fuming beach
with its snow storm of gulls. She was soon to see something that many
would travel a thousand miles to witness, but unconscious of what was
coming she sat watching the penguins, then with the boat hook point she
began scratching figures on the sand, but with difficulty, on account of
the length of the staff.
Sitting like this her eyes were suddenly attracted seaward to a point in
the water beyond the line of the figure-head. Things were moving out
there, moving rapidly and drawing in-shore and now, riding an incoming
wave, like a half submerged canoe, she saw a dark elongated form. It
came shooting through the foam just like a beaching canoe and as it
dragged itself up the sand a sound like the far off roar of a lion came
echoing along the cliffs.
She knew at once what it was, a sea elephant. Prince Selm had described
them and how they came ashore at Kerguelen to breed, journeying there
through thousands of miles of ocean and arriving in hundreds and
thousands at different points of the coast.
This was the first of the great herd and, as she watched, more were
coming, breasting the waves and breaking from the foam and coming up the
beach like vast, rapidly-moving slugs.
The sight held her fascinated. Every newcomer saluted the land with a
roar. They were the males; the females of the herd, still far out at sea
beyond the islands, would not land to give birth to their young for
another fortnight.
She watched till perhaps two hundred had beached, then the invasion
ceased; there was no more roaring, and over the army of invaders,
lumping along hither and thither on the flat rocks, the sea-gulls flew
and screamed in anger or in welcome, who could say?
Prince Selm had spoken of how the sea elephants fought together on
landing. He was wrong. The great, far-distant brutes instead of fighting
seemed resting and sunning themselves and the girl, rising up, came
along in their direction. She had forgotten Bompard and La Touche.
She reached the river which was spating from the recent rains, but great
flat-topped rocks made it always possible to cross; she crossed it.
The sea elephants were close to her now and seemed not in the least
disturbed by her presence, they lay here and there, vast brutes, twenty
feet in height, weighing tons, raising themselves occasionally on their
flippers and then sinking back to rest with a sigh of contentment.
She measured them with her eye, noted the short trunks that seemed so
useless, the tusks, the old scar marks got in battle and the splendour
of their strength and mass and muscle. Like the land elephants there was
something about them terrible yet benign.
She drew closer. As regarded animals of any good sort she had the
fearlessness of a child, the instinct that would have been terrified by
a reptile or anything truly ferocious however masked by fur or feather.
These things she felt to be absolutely harmless, as regarded herself,
and they were a million years closer to her than the penguins.
The penguins had amused her, but for all their quaintness and politeness
they seemed as far apart from her as mechanical toys. Her heart had not
gone out to them with that love of living things which lies in the heart
of children, of women and most men.
She drew closer still. The great brutes were now watching her
steadfastly, but seemingly without fear. She had left the boat hook
behind a mile away, dropping it because of its weight, and with the
exception of the knife in her belt she was unarmed. Perhaps they knew
this. Vague in their brains must have lain memories of great hurts when
they were the hunted and men the hunters; but this vision evidently
stored up no antagonistic feelings. Possibly they knew her sex and
possibly the instinct which never failed them told them that she was
friendly.
Less than ten yards away from the nearest bull she sat down on a piece
of rock, and no sooner had she taken her seat than they seemed
immensely closer and her own position one of absolute helplessness. With
a sudden rush, moving with that swiftness with which she had seen them
moving on first landing, the bull could have reached her, but the bull
did not move, his lordship from the sea, filled with the absolute and
complete contentment of the male at rest, moved only his trunk, he
seemed sniffing her and the momentary fear that had seized her passed
utterly away.
She could sniff him too. Just as cows fill the air with the fragrance of
milk the herd filled the place with the scent of fish and fur and a tang
of deep sea like the smell of beach, only sharper and fresher.
Then, just as people talk to horses and dogs, leaning forward a bit she
began to talk to him.
The effect of the sweet soothing voice was magical, and for a moment not
in the least soothing. The near bulls moved, evidently deeply disturbed
in their minds. The majority, including the biggest and nearest bull,
turned half away as if to get off, then turned again as if to renew
their astonishment.
The girl laughed, the timidity of this vast force seemed to her less
timidity than masculine awkwardness, as though a number of heavy old
gentlemen, taking their ease in their club, were suddenly put to
confusion and flight by a female charmer appearing before them.