It was the men, they were coming along the beach from the break in the cliffs. Bompard leading, La Touche lagging behind.

Bompard was carrying something under his arm, it was a Kerguelen cabbage. La Touche carried nothing.

CHAPTER XI

THE CACHE

When she lay down that night on the hard sand, with the sailcloth beneath her head, she could not sleep. The wretchedness of having to lie down fully dressed, of being unable to change her clothes, fell on her like a blight.

She lay fighting the problem. It was impossible to go on like this. One might live with little food, but to live always without undressing and changing one's things was impossible. This problem was insoluble, or seemed so. Then she found a half solution. She would discard her stockings and under garments, make a bundle of them and put them under the sailcloth, she would not wear them again, she would suffer from cold, no matter, anything was better than that feeling of being fully dressed always. The weather, besides, was fairly warm. She would learn to do without shoes as well as without stockings. She would have to go about without shoes or stockings. She thought of the men. Strangely enough the thought of going about without shoes or stockings seemed less repulsive to her than the thought of going about with her hair loose.

As she lay revolving this business in her mind the whale birds flitting about in the darkness outside suddenly ceased their crying and through the silence came a vague mysterious sound that deepened into a humming like the drone of a gigantic top; the humming became a roar, the roar of rain. Rain falling in solid sheets, coming across the land like a moving Niagara, now taking the beach and now the sea. Never had she heard such rain as this, falling in the black and utter darkness. The shelve of the beach saved the cave from being flooded and the beetling of the cliff kept it dry and within a couple of feet of the entrance but it could not keep out the rain smell, the raw smell of Kerguelen carried from inland, the smell of bog patches and new washed dolerite and bitter vegetation, keen, like the smell of the Stone Age. Then after a bit the first great onslaught slackened.

The girl raised herself on her elbow, then she rose and cast off the oilskin coat that had served for a blanket. She undressed in the darkness, made a bundle of her stockings and her Jaeger underclothes and placed them beneath the sailcloth, then removing the comb from her hair and letting it fall she came out into the blackness and stood in the torrential rain.

It beat on her head and shoulders and breast, it cascaded down her limbs, soothing as the hand of mesmerism, refreshing, delightful beyond words, then she came back into the cave and, finding the cotton waste, dried herself as well as she could, dried her hair and twisted it into a knot, put on her blouse, coat and skirt and covered herself with the oilskin.

She had solved the question of a bath and change of clothes, at least for the moment. The discomfort of the rough tweed of the skirt against her unprotected limbs, of the hard bed, of the sailcloth pillow with its vague smell of canvas and jute, all these were nothing to that other discomfort. These were physical, that was psychical.

She fell asleep and slept till long after dawn. When she came out the rain had ceased and through air fresh as though from the hand of Creation vast clouds were rolling away towards the islands over a blue-green sea.

They had made a fire on the night before and had cooked some of the mussels in the baling tin, the rest had been put by to cook for breakfast; hot food of any sort is a revelation if you have been condemned to live on cold stuff for any time, but this morning there was to be nothing hot. The firewood, one of the bottom boards of the boat chopped up, had been left out in the rain. The sight of it, all soaked, made the girl forget her bare feet and her hair roughly tied up in a knot. The housekeeper that lives in every woman rose up in revolt, all the more so as the guilty ones tried to defend themselves.

"As for me," said La Touche, "I was listening to the rain, it drove everything else out of my head."

"That is so," said Bompard, "I thought every moment we would be flooded out. It was no time for a man to be thinking of firewood."

"Well, you will have no fire and nothing hot," said Cleo, "and those mussels will be wasted--they won't keep, but there's no use in saying any more about it--only you must learn to think of things. It's not pleasant, I know, to have to look ahead but one has to do it. You see I am not wearing my boots and stockings, boots wear out and stockings wear out quicker, so I just looked ahead last night and said to myself--'your stockings will soon be worn into holes, so you must begin now to learn to do without them.' It's not pleasant, but it has to be done. If that ship we ran into had looked ahead we would not have been wrecked."

"That is true," said Bompard, anxious to get off the main subject. "If those chaps had eyes in their heads they wouldn't be feeding the fishes."

"It wasn't all their fault," put in La Touche. "If those chaps on the bridge hadn't put the engines on we wouldn't have rammed her as we did."

"Well," said Cleo, "there is no use in going back over things. We have to get breakfast and then go and open the cache."

She had told them of the cache overnight and, to her wonder, the thing had interested them, so this morning when they had finished their biscuits and beef she found not the slightest difficulty in making them start.

She put on her boots for the journey and then they reeled along the beach in the usual order, Cleo first, the two others following; the great skull made them halt and discuss it for a moment but the figure-head when they reached it held them entirely in its spell.

She could scarcely tear them away, they discussed it from every point of view, argued over it, pondered over it and were only brought to their senses by a hint that it would have to be chopped up for firewood.

Then, when they reached the cache, there was another long pause for discussion, the two sitting down to smoke whilst they talked it over.

It was not till she set to work pulling more stones away that they began to get busy; then when once started they laboured like negroes. The glimpse of the barrel end seemed to inflame them, but indeed they did not want even that, for the business they had set their hands to had all the fascination of treasure hunting mixed with the thrills of house-breaking. Here was "stuff," plunder of some sort, who could tell what?

An hour and a half of labour brought them sweating to the end of the business and the presiding gulls saw exposed to the light of day two big barrels, two long cases and an amount of canned meat and vegetables enough to stock a small shop, also a harpoon of the old type and two shovels placed by the long cases. Then after a rest of half an hour the barrels were sampled. One contained flour, the other blankets and mens'

clothes, sweaters and coats and trousers. One of the long cases contained kitchen utensils and tin cups and plates, also knives and forks and spoons.

The other contained "comforts," tea and coffee and sugar in sealed tins, some rolls of tobacco, drugs and a few surgical instruments. All the equipment, in fact, necessary for an expedition of a dozen men for six months. Not a drop of liquor.

Perhaps that was why the girl was more overjoyed by the details of the find than the mariners.

Bompard openly expressed his mind.

"Not a bottle of wine or a drop of rum, swabs."

"Well, you've got some tobacco," said Cleo, "and there's tea and coffee and cups and saucers, and a teapot--no coffeepot--well one can make coffee in anything--" She was running over the stores in her mind, standing, reviewing them with no thought of anything else and her soul filled with a joy and satisfaction absolutely new.

Blankets! Tea! Coffee! and clothes--even mens' clothes if it came to the worst. One might have fancied her to have fixed definitely in her mind that she was to spend a very long time on the sh.o.r.es of Kerguelen and to have accepted the terrible prospect with equanimity. It was not so. She was living in the moment, so entirely in the moment that these things were tremendous and vivid and compared with them Art, Music, Religion, Ambition, and the gauds of Civilization were as nothing.

This power to live in the moment is the form of strength that brings men through battles and women through adversity. It fells cities and builds them. On Kerguelen it is salvation. For, here to think of the future, unless in terms of material necessities, to dream, to brood, means death or madness.

But Bompard and La Touche, resting themselves after their labours, were not living in the moment nor in the past nor in the present, they were living in that strange sad land called the Might-Have-Been. They might have been in the way to a jolly booze by now if that fool who provisioned the cache had not forgotten the drink. They were thankful for nothing. They had food, they had clothes, they had tobacco. They were glad enough of the blankets, but even the thought of the blankets could not relieve their depression.

They were not drunkards, but the cache had given them hopes of drinks.

These hopes shattered they sat like discontented children who had been promised sweets and disappointed.

But this did not last long, the Hopeless is its own antidote and after half a pipe of tobacco their cheerfulness, such as it was, returned and they fell to discussing with the girl the best way of treating the stores.

Bompard, considering the difficulty of transporting the stuff to the caves, proposed that they should move their abode right up to the cache.

Cleo pointed out that there were no caves here, so, unless they moved the caves as well as their belongings, they would have nowhere to sleep in.

"I think the best thing we can do," said she, "is to take what we want and then cover up the rest till we want some more."

"Put the stuff under the rocks again?" asked Bompard.

"Yes."

"Mon Dieu!" said La Touche.

It was not what he said but the way he said it that angered the girl.

La Touche was a problem in her mind. She could understand Bompard but she could not quite understand La Touche. It seemed to her that he was one of those people who without much intelligence, yet, or perhaps because of that fact, make fine centres of rebellion. She could fancy him leading a mob to tear down something that vexed him, and everything seemed to vex him, at times.

But though she was not clear about La Touche she was quite clear about herself and she was determined to be his master. She felt instinctively that he was the leader of Bompard and that Bompard alone would have been a much better individual, in many respects.

"There is no use in saying 'Mon Dieu,'" said she, "the thing has to be done. The gulls and the rabbits will ruin everything if we leave things about. Come, Bompard."

Bompard rose up at the order and began to a.s.sist in sorting out the things they were to take back with them. Then La Touche, not to be out of the business and perhaps ashamed of himself, or of his position as an idler, joined in.

Had she given the order direct to him he might have revolted; she had conquered him for the moment none the less.

First they began to sort out the things to be kept for immediate use. A saucepan, three tin cups, three tin plates, knives and forks, the teapot and kettle, a canister of tea, sugar and salt. The canned stuff, including thirty cans of vegetables, Cleo left untouched. She determined to keep it in reserve and depend upon the cabbage plants, one of which Bompard had brought back yesterday.