CHAPTER XII
THE QUARREL
Next morning broke fine. She was awakened by voices quarrelling and cameout to find a breezy and absolutely cloudless day, with the sea runningsmooth and the sunlight on the far islands.
The two men, who had fallen out over some trifle, were wrangling likefish-women, Bompard having the worst of it, as his ineffectual southernoaths were no match for the language of the other.
The girl stood looking at La Touche, but he seemed not to mind in theleast.
Then she turned away and walked down to the boat.
She heard Bompard say: "There, you have sent her off, talking likethat," and what La Touche replied she could not hear, but she guessed itwas 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, lookingat the purple islands and the gulls like new minted gold and the greatarch of the bay lined out with a thread of creamy foam.
After a while, turning round, she saw that Bompard was lighting a firewith 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 astand for the kettle, and La Touche was opening the hermetically sealedcanister of tea with his knife; neither man was speaking and the mealpassed off almost in silence.
She felt that any moment the quarrel might break out again and herinstinct was to get away from them.
She had left the fisherman's knife and belt in her cave; she went to thecave and strapped the belt around her waist. The boat hook was lying onthe sand; she picked it up and, carrying it, walked away down the beachin the direction of the cache.
The boat hook was a weapon of sorts and it was better out of the men'sway; the knife was different. It had come to her that in this place itwas better to be armed and she determined always to wear it.
But no sounds of quarrelling followed her, only the quarrelling of thegulls, and half a mile away, looking back, she saw that the men hadseparated. La Touche was standing by the boat and Bompard was walkingtowards the Lizard point. She sat down to rest for a moment and shewatched the figure of Bompard. It grew smaller and smaller till itreached the point, then it vanished over the rocks.
She saw La Touche walk away towards the caves; he disappeared, and thebeach, now destitute of life, lay sung to by the sea and flown over bythe gulls. Nothing speaking of man lay there but the boat that lookedlike a toy cast there by a child. It held her eyes, focussed herthoughts, and became the centre of a sudden longing, a desire soulsearching as the desire for water--the desire for civilization, for thethings and people that she knew.
Her companions had become horrible to her. To go on living with themseemed appalling. The rocks, the sea, the gulls, even the rain, allthese fitted with her mind--they seemed in some way familiar, but withthe men she had nothing in common.
It is worse to be wrecked on a social state than on a desert shore. Shewas 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 herweakness. She recognised that superiority of mind would count littleafter a while with these minds, incapable of distinguishing grades, orvalues, beyond money value and the distinction of master from man, andthat sex so far from being a protection would be a danger.
Her brave mind allowed itself to be borne along for a while on thesecurrents of thought, then it reacted against them, repeating again theold formula that to think, here, on other things than the moment andthe material was to die or go distraught.
She got up and shifted her position, sitting with her back towards theboat.
She could see the penguins, now, drilling beneath the cliff and beyondthe penguins the figure-head of the ship and beyond that the fuming beachwith its snow storm of gulls. She was soon to see something that manywould travel a thousand miles to witness, but unconscious of what wascoming she sat watching the penguins, then with the boat hook point shebegan scratching figures on the sand, but with difficulty, on account ofthe length of the staff.
Sitting like this her eyes were suddenly attracted seaward to a point inthe water beyond the line of the figure-head. Things were moving outthere, moving rapidly and drawing in-shore and now, riding an incomingwave, like a half submerged canoe, she saw a dark elongated form. Itcame shooting through the foam just like a beaching canoe and as itdragged itself up the sand a sound like the far off roar of a lion cameechoing along the cliffs.
She knew at once what it was, a sea elephant. Prince Selm had describedthem and how they came ashore at Kerguelen to breed, journeying therethrough thousands of miles of ocean and arriving in hundreds andthousands at different points of the coast.
This was the first of the great herd and, as she watched, more werecoming, breasting the waves and breaking from the foam and coming up thebeach like vast, rapidly-moving slugs.
The sight held her fascinated. Every newcomer saluted the land with aroar. They were the males; the females of the herd, still far out at seabeyond the islands, would not land to give birth to their young foranother fortnight.
She watched till perhaps two hundred had beached, then the invasionceased; there was no more roaring, and over the army of invaders,lumping along hither and thither on the flat rocks, the sea-gulls flewand screamed in anger or in welcome, who could say?
Prince Selm had spoken of how the sea elephants fought together onlanding. He was wrong. The great, far-distant brutes instead of fightingseemed resting and sunning themselves and the girl, rising up, camealong in their direction. She had forgotten Bompard and La Touche.
She reached the river which was spating from the recent rains, but greatflat-topped rocks made it always possible to cross; she crossed it.
The sea elephants were close to her now and seemed not in the leastdisturbed by her presence, they lay here and there, vast brutes, twentyfeet in height, weighing tons, raising themselves occasionally on theirflippers and then sinking back to rest with a sigh of contentment.
She measured them with her eye, noted the short trunks that seemed souseless, the tusks, the old scar marks got in battle and the splendourof their strength and mass and muscle. Like the land elephants there wassomething about them terrible yet benign.
She drew closer. As regarded animals of any good sort she had thefearlessness of a child, the instinct that would have been terrified bya 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 politenessthey seemed as far apart from her as mechanical toys. Her heart had notgone out to them with that love of living things which lies in the heartof children, of women and most men.
She drew closer still. The great brutes were now watching hersteadfastly, but seemingly without fear. She had left the boat hookbehind a mile away, dropping it because of its weight, and with theexception of the knife in her belt she was unarmed. Perhaps they knewthis. Vague in their brains must have lain memories of great hurts whenthey were the hunted and men the hunters; but this vision evidentlystored up no antagonistic feelings. Possibly they knew her sex andpossibly the instinct which never failed them told them that she wasfriendly.
Less than ten yards away from the nearest bull she sat down on a pieceof rock, and no sooner had she taken her seat than they seemedimmensely closer and her own position one of absolute helplessness. Witha sudden rush, moving with that swiftness with which she had seen themmoving on first landing, the bull could have reached her, but the bulldid not move, his lordship from the sea, filled with the absolute andcomplete contentment of the male at rest, moved only his trunk, heseemed sniffing her and the momentary fear that had seized her passedutterly away.
She could sniff him too. Just as cows fill the air with the fragrance ofmilk
the herd filled the place with the scent of fish and fur and a tangof deep sea like the smell of beach, only sharper and fresher.
Then, just as people talk to horses and dogs, leaning forward a bit shebegan to talk to him.
The effect of the sweet soothing voice was magical, and for a moment notin the least soothing. The near bulls moved, evidently deeply disturbedin their minds. The majority, including the biggest and nearest bull,turned half away as if to get off, then turned again as if to renewtheir astonishment.
The girl laughed, the timidity of this vast force seemed to her lesstimidity than masculine awkwardness, as though a number of heavy oldgentlemen, taking their ease in their club, were suddenly put toconfusion and flight by a female charmer appearing before them.