CHAPTER VI
DAWN
The girl was not dead as Bompard imagined, she had been stunned and hadpassed from that condition into the pseudo-sleep that follows profoundexcitement.
She was awakened by a flick of spray on her face, a touch from the greatsea 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 onhis side. La Touche on his back, forward, shewed nothing but his knees;across the gunnel lay the sea, desolate in the dawn, turbulent, yethard and mournful as a view of slated roofs after rain.
She had never seen the sea so close before, she had never smelt itsheart and the savour of its soul; bitter, fresh, new and ever renewed bythe blowing wind.
The whole tragedy of the night was alive in her mind as a picture, butit seemed the picture of what another person had seen. Her past life,her own personality, seemed vague and unconnected with her as the pastlife and personality of another person. This was reality. Reality new,terrific, pungent as that which the soul may experience on awakeningafter death.
She knew, as though the desolate sea had told her, that the great yachtwas gone and everyone on board of her; yet the fact, perhaps from itsvery enormity, failed to realize itself fully in her mind. Then, in aflash and horribly clearly, came the picture of her immediateenvironment on board the _Gaston de Paris_, quite little things andthings more important: the silver-plated taps of the bath in thebath-room, adjoining her cabin, the silk curtains of her bunk, thehundred and one trifles that made for comfort and ease. She saw thecabin servants and the face of the chief steward, a fat pale-faced man,a typical _maitre d'hotel_; the dinner of the night before, when thepeople 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 thesea, the sea she could touch by dipping her hand over the gunnel, thesea that had stripped her of everything but life and body, the dress andboots she wore and the yellow oilskin coat that covered her. Her handresting 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 theswell, tried to re-construct yesterday and to feel.
Horror, pity for the fate of the others, the sense of the great disasterthat had happened to the _Gaston de Paris_, of these only the latterpossessed any vitality in her mind. The feeling of unreality destroyedher grip upon all else.
Her mind was subdued to her own condition. The hard angles of thewoodwork against which she leaned and the spray upon her face, the boatand the men in it, the sharp cut wave tops--these were real, with anappalling reality.
It was as though she had never come across a real thing before, andacross her mind came a vague, vague recognition of that great truth thatreal things bruise one, eat at one, try to make one their own, once theymanage to break down the barrier of custom that separates the false fromthe true; that quite common things have a power greater than the powerof mind, that only amidst the falsity of civilised life and the stageare the properties subordinate to the persons and emotions of theactors.
At this moment Bompard, suddenly moving in his sleep, roused himself andsat 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 howis mademoiselle alive?"
"I don't know," said the girl, unconscious as to what he was referringto. "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 cameover 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 furiousabout something and pushing Bompard away stared round and round at seaand sky as if in search of someone.
"Bon Dieu," cried La Touche. "The cursed boat." He spat as thoughsomething bitter were in his mouth and wiped his lips with the back ofhis hand. He did not seem to care a button whether the lady were aliveor not. He had been dreaming that he was in a tavern, just raising aglass 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, watchedthe two men. An observer perched in the sky above might have noticed thecurious fact that on board the forsaken boat quarter deck and fo'c'slestill 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, washolding himself in. They were old yachtsmen, no disaster could shakethat fact.
La Touche, rising and taking his seat on a thwart and looking everywherebut in the direction of the girl, as though ashamed of something, begancutting up some tobacco in a mechanical way, whilst Bompard, on hisknees, was exploring the contents of the forward locker. La Touche was afair-haired man, younger than Bompard, a melancholy looking individualwho always seemed gazing at the worst of things. He spoke now as thegirl drew his attention to something far away in the east, somethingsketched vaguely in the sky as though a picture lay there beyond thehaze.
"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 thesail 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 boatfrom us, they're all gone, unless it was a boat from that hooker westruck."
"Boat," said La Touche with a dismal laugh. "She got no boat away, shewent down by the bows with the fellows like flies on her, this is theonly 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 theland?"
"Why, yes, mademoiselle," said Bompard, "the wind is setting towardsthere and we have a sail, I am going to step the mast now when I'vetaken stock--well, we won't starve. The tube is provisioned for a fullcrew for a fortnight, water too, we won't starve, that's a fact. LaTouche, 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 movementsof the two men were part of some slow-acting, wooden, automaticmechanism. Whether they reached the land or not seemed a matter almostof indifference to them. Accustomed to people who talked much and hadmuch to talk about she could not understand. All this was part of thenew world in which she found herself, part of the boat itself, of themast, now stepped against the grey sky, the waves, the gulls, and thattremendous 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 bagsas he worked. She noticed the bag, its texture, and the words"Traversal--Toulon" stamped on it. The maconochie tin which he hadplaced on a seat and a tin of beef with a Libby label held her eyes asthough they were things new and extraordinary. They were. They werefood. She had never seen food before, food as it really is, the barrierbetween life and death, food naked and stripped of all pretence.
Bompard coming aft wit
h the sheet shipped the tiller, and, taking hisseat by the girl, put the boat before the wind. La Touche, who had takenhis seat on the after thwart, was engaged in opening the tin of beef.The girl scarcely noticed him. She was experiencing a new sensation, thesensation 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 thingalive, buoyant, eager and full of purpose, silent, too, for the slappingand buffeting of the water against the planking had ceased. Running thuswith the wind and swell there was no opposition, everything was withher.
"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 abiscuit, then he helped Bompard and himself, then he scrambled forward,leaving his beef and biscuit on the thwart, and reappeared with apannikin of water; it was handed to the lady first.
The food seemed to loose their tongues. It was as though the castedifference had been broken by the act of eating together.
"I'd never thought to set tooth in a biscuit again when that smash camelast night," said Bompard addressing no one in particular.
"I wasn't thinking of biscuits," said La Touche, "I was bowled over inthe alley-way. You see, I was running, so it took me harder. What set merunning I don't know, my legs took care of themselves--I was justleaning like this, see, on the look out and between two blinks there wasthe 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 wewere done. Then I cleared aft, running, with no thought in my mind butto 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 Cleo, "and something seemed toknock me down. Then when I got on deck the light was put on and I saw agreat ship on the right hand side; she seemed sinking, but I read hername, she was quite close. Then the light went out and someone caught meand 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, "ustwo was in the boat."
"I thought it was Larsen," cut in La Touche. "Larsen helped me to getthe canvas off her, that was when the electric was on--what became ofLarsen?"
"Lord knows," said Bompard. "I scrambled into her just as the light wasshut off, then the chaps on deck chucked the lady in. Next thing we werefending her off from the ship. I was shouting to the chaps on deck tojump and we'd pick them up, we'd got the oars out then. I tell you I wasfuddled up for I'd got it in my head that the hooker was to port of usthough I'd seen her with my own eyes to starboard. I was thinking we'dbe taken down with the suck of her and I was bent on getting ahead ofher."
"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 abit the _Gaston_ blew up."
"Blew up," said the girl.
"The boilers," said Bompard, "they lifted the decks off her. She musthave 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: "Therewasn't another boat could have got away."
The sun was well risen now, the clouds were high and breaking and thefar away land shewed up, vast in the distance, with a white line ofsnow-covered peaks against the sky, desolate as when Kerguelen firstsighted them.
Cleo with her eyes fixed across the leagues of tumbling tourmalinetinted sea almost forgot the others. That was the place where the windwas bearing them to, a place where there was nothing. Neither hotels norhouses nor huts, nor men nor women, a place where no landing-stage wouldreceive them, no voice welcome them. Her throat worked for a secondconvulsively as she battled with the quite new things that the far offmountains were telling her.
It was now and not till now that she recognised fully what Fate had doneto her. It was now and not till now that she saw Time before her as athing 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, thebreakfast hour, the luncheon hour, the hour that brought afternoon tea,the dresses that went with each phase, the emotions and interests, andchanging forms of being, the day which made a person change to its lightand the person of ten o'clock in the morning quite different from theperson of noon--this thing which we talk of as the day appeared beforeher now as what it really is, life itself, as civilized men know life, athing outside ourselves yet of ourselves and without which the circlingof the sun is as the circling of a pointer on a blank dial--. This thingwas gone.
La Touche had got more forward and was smoking and, though the wind waswith them, a faint scent of tobacco smoke came on the spill of the windfrom the sail. Bompard was chewing, spitting occasionally to starboardand wiping his mouth with the back of his bronzed tattooed hand.
The vague scent of the tobacco threaded up all sorts of things in thegirl's mind: Madame de Warens, the streets of Paris, the deck of theyacht. She remembered the piece of embroidery work she had been engagedon last night, and then a scrap of conversation she had overheardbetween the doctor and the artist towards the end of dinner, they weretalking of the passeistes and futurists, of the work of Pablo Picasso,of Sunyer, of Boccioni and Durio, arguing with extraordinary passionabout the work of these people.
"There's weather or something over there," said La Touche who hadslipped down and was seated on the bottom boards with his back to athwart; he nodded his head towards Kerguelen.
Around one of the highest peaks a lead-coloured cloud had wrapped itselfturban-wise, and even as they looked the cloud turban increased involume and height, mournful and monstrous as some djin-born vision ofthe Arabian story-tellers.
"That's snow," said Bompard, "and by the twist of it it's in awhirlwind."
"Bon Dieu, what a place," said La Touche.
"You may say that," said Bompard, "but that's nothing, it's when we cometo 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 fewideas, and from the trend of it the curious fact appeared that LaTouche, the ship's grouser and dismal James, was taking the optimisticalside, whilst Bompard, generally cheerful, was the pessimist.
La Touche's optimism was, perhaps, the outcome of fear. What they hadgone through was nothing to the prospect of having to make a landing onthat tremendous coast, simply because what they had gone through hadcome on them suddenly. This thing had to be faced in cold blood. Thecoward in La Touche refused to face it fully, refused to face the factthat with this swell and with all the chances of uncharted and unknownreefs and rocks the risk was appalling. He grew angry.
"Don't be a coward over it," said he. That set Bompard off, and for amoment the girl thought they would have come to blows. Then it passedand they were as friendly as before, just as though nothing hadhappened.
Their talk and the whole business had been conducted as though the girlwere not there. In the few hours since daybreak, quarter deck andfo'c'sle had vanished. They had become welded into one community, allequal, and the lady was no longer the lady. There was no hint ofdisrespect, no hint of respect. They were all equal, equal sharers inthe chances of the sea.
More, the sex standard seemed to have vanished with the social. Nothingremained 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 itagain, it was all the same, for the human level is above all littlethings.
Towards noon and with the coast now closer and well-defined, La Touchesighted something ahead. It was a rock, high and pointed like a blackspire protruding from the sea and standing there like an outpost of theland.
"Had we better give it a wide berth?" asked
La Touche. "Maybe there'smore near it."
"The sea is running smooth enough by it," said Bompard. "I don't seebreakers, 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 fellon the water and the rock, pied with roosting guillemots. As the boatdrew near the guillemots gave tongue. The sound came against the windfierce and complaining, antagonistic like the voice of loneliness cryingout against them and telling them to be gone--be gone--be gone!
Cleo, as they passed, saw the green water sliding up and falling fromthe polished black rock surface. The sight seemed to bring the hostilecoast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying of the guillemots as it diedaway behind them seemed a barrier passed, never to be re-crossed.