CHAPTER X
THE CROSS
The thing itself startled her less than the fact that she had not seenit before. It was as though it had been put up whilst she sat to rest.
It was so striking, so palpably evident that anyone coming along towardsthe figure-head as she had done must have been attracted by it. Toverify this she walked a few yards away and even as she did so the crossvanished, shut out from sight by the rock to the left of it. Only fromthe point of view of the figure-head could it be seen.
It was as though the beach had tried to frighten her again.
She came towards it, noticing as she came the shortness of the arms. Itwas less a cross than a sign-post, a sign-post raised on a mound ofsmall rocks; it was tarred to preserve it from the weather. From theleft limb close to the post a metal box was hanging by a wire, and onthe post itself, a few feet from the base, there was a plate ofgalvanised iron nailed to the wood. On the plate were stamped somewords.
She stepped upon the mound and read: "Kestrel Expedition. Cache I. Don'tdisturb 19--"
The date was three years back.
The cache, whatever it might be, was under the mound. Also, this thinghad evidently nothing to do with the wreck, for the embossed metal platemust have been prepared in some civilized country for the purpose towhich it had been put.
She reached up and tried to detach the box and pulling on it broughtdown the slat of wood that formed the arms of the cross, the nails thathad held it having rusted away.
Then, having detached the box, she examined it. It was an ordinarysailor's tobacco box, she pressed the spring, opened it, and found apiece of paper folded in four and inscribed as follows, the writing donewith a purple indelible pencil:
Opened the cach. Took nuthing out. Stuck in som extry goods Put the ship about. To any one that finds it in this blasted hole Sam Slacum, Master Mariner. Thresler 19--
Then as an after thought:
"Keep up your spirits."
The date was a year after the date on the post. The cache had not beenvisited evidently since then. For three years it had lain here, and forthree years, evidently, only one ship had put in. This dismal thoughttook all the pleasure away from the find, she sat down on the rocksforming the mound and holding the paper in her fingers gave way for amoment to a depression that came against her like a black, surging sea.Then she remembered that the cross had been only visible from one point,that vessels might have been here and not have seen it, that men mighteven have landed and found it without leaving the fact behind them,after the manner of the writer of this paper.
And then, suddenly, and as if from the sky came the thought ofProvidence, the feeling that she had been led along the beach to findthe wood and to find this. The remembrance of how she had been savedfrom the _Gaston de Paris_ rose up in her mind also--saved almost by amiracle.
To a person torn from civilization and flung into the arms of Nature themost terrible thing is the sense of the amorphous, the feeling thatthere is no structure in this world where houses are not and laws arenot and streets are not, no power to intervene between oneself andinjury, no thread to cling to. The idea of a Providence to such a personis like brandy.
The girl remembered the words she had spoken that morning to hercompanions when she said that one must not think here but work. Therewas no use in thinking of the past or the future, of ships coming ornot, they had been taken care of so far and the feeling came to her thatthis would be so to the end.
She rose up, put the paper back in the box and the box in her pocket,then she turned to the cache.
She walked round the mound to a spot where the covering rocks had fallenaway a bit and going down on her knees began pulling them apart andcarrying them off one by one, dumping them a few yards away. Her ringshindered her and taking them off she put them in the tobacco box and thebox in her pocket. Under the rocks lay a covering of sand, she fetchedthe arm of the cross and scraping away at the sand came upon somethinghard, it was the end of a barrel. Then she stood up, flushed with herwork and satisfied.
The stores were there, whatever they might be, and with the help of thetwo men they would easily be uncovered. The question whether they wouldbe of any use after all the years they had lain there recurred to her,but she put it aside. They would soon see.
Then she started back for the caves taking the slat of wood with her asa trophy. As she went the recollection of the find followed heragreeably, she did not know which to congratulate herself most upon, thewood of the wreck or the cache. Then came the dismal thought of winter,begotten of the idea of fires. It was the middle of August. Winter layahead. If no ship came to take them off what would their life be likeduring the winter months? Imagine this place at Christmas, coveredperhaps with snow! The gloom of this idea pursued her for a mile or moretill all of a sudden she stopped and laughed aloud at her ownstupidity. It was not autumn, it was spring. They were south of the lineand summer lay before them, not winter. That gloomy ghost, fear of theFuture, which spoils so many men's lives in Civilization, had trickedher and made her miserable and as she cast it from her and pursued herway she said to herself again: "I will not think, here the person whothinks and broods is lost."
When she reached the caves the men had not yet returned; leaving theslat of wood leaning against the cliff she came down to the boat andstood for a moment looking at the sea. The tide was far out now andcoming in again, the sea had fallen to a gentle glassy swell and thetreacherous wind had died away to a faint breeze. Out there where thewaves were coming in and at the limit of the sands rocks were uncovered,shaggy, black rocks that seemed covered with fur. She came down to themand found that the fur was a coating of mussels. Here was another find.She began to pick them and then, running back to the cave for the balingtin, filled it to the brim, and placed it in the boat. Having done thisshe sat down with her back to the boat to rest and wait for the men.
They ought to have returned by this. The thought that some disaster hadhappened to them came to her and tried to creep into her mind, but shedrove it out promptly, stamped on it and began to think of how theywould cook the mussles. They would make a fire with the slat she hadbrought back, it was tarred and would burn finely, with that and someof the bottom boards of the boat, unless Bompard could be persuaded togo and cut some wood from the wreckage three miles away. Then shethought how fortunate it was that men smoked. La Touche had a Swedishmatch box nearly full of matches and Bompard had a tinder box, one ofthe sort that makes a spark by the striking of a wheel against a flint.
Then she yawned.
She had been in the open air since early dawn and it was now noon. Shewas not tired, but she was filled with a craving for something, yet shecould not tell what this something was that she wanted and without whichshe felt somehow lost. Then she knew--it was a roof.
A person accustomed to live under a roof and suddenly condemned to livein the open suffers nothing for the first few hours. Then theregradually comes upon him a weariness and distress almost unimaginable tothose who have not experienced it. He craves not only for a roof but forwalls around him to protect him from the great open spaces that seemsucking away his individuality. A man living absolutely in the openwithout tent or cave or house wherein to concentrate himself wouldsurely and without doubt either become mad or descend to the level ofthe beasts.
She came up the beach to the cave where she had slept, went into it, andsat down, her mind finding instant relief from the craving that hadfilled it. Her hands went up to her hair and began to arrange it as bestthey could. Had she been alone on the beach she would have taken thepins out and left it loose for the winds to comb and blow about, but thethought of the men prevented her. She did not like the idea of theirseeing her going about with her hair down; after her experiences in theboat it seemed absurd to quibble over a thing like this and she tried toargue with herself without avail. It seemed to her that if she wentabout in _neglige_ like that she would lower hers
elf. How? There wasnothing unwomanly in flowing hair, there was nothing indelicate. No, butwomen of her class never appeared before men in that fashion, she wouldlower herself socially.
A fool would have laughed at her, holding that amidst castaways therewas no such thing as social position, and, though fools are notinevitably wrong in their opinions, he would have been wrong.
Though Bompard and La Touche had dropped the "mademoiselle" inaddressing her, they treated her since landing with a certain respectwhich would have been wanting had she been a woman of their own class.
The class difference held and was a greater protection to her thananything else. In their eyes she was not a woman, but a lady, a factthat chilled familiarity, or worse, and, with the aid of her superiorintelligence, gave her authority.
She felt this instinctively and determined that at no time and in nomanner would she allow her position to degrade.
Then, having done what she could to her hair she took the rings from thetobacco box and put them on. She would have much preferred not to haveworn them, they irritated her, but they were part of her insignia andshe put them on.
As she was putting the tobacco box back in her pocket something lookedin at her. It was a rabbit, a grey fat rabbit that had lopped right tothe cave mouth; it sat up for a moment on its hind legs, looked in, andthen lopped off without any hurry, as though a girl seated in a cavewere an accustomed object and a human being something not to be afraidof.
This fearlessness of the rabbit would have started her on a long anddismal train of thought had she not checked herself in time and like theman in the haunted house who kept the fear of ghosts away by thinking ofplum puddings, she started to work, re-folding the sail that had servedher for a pillow the night before; then she took the oilskin coat outand shook it, and folding it, placed it by the left wall of the cavewith the sou'wester on top of it. She was tidying her house.
Then she went into the men's cave and did a bit of tidying there,stacking the tins more neatly and putting the odds and ends together.The sight of the cotton waste gave her an idea and going down to theboat she emptied the mussels from the baling tin on to the sand, filledthe tin with sea water and bathed her face and hands, drying them onthe cotton. She had finished this operation and had got the mussels backin the tin when a shout caused her to turn.
It was the men, they were coming along the beach from the break in thecliffs. Bompard leading, La Touche lagging behind.
Bompard was carrying something under his arm, it was a Kerguelencabbage. La Touche carried nothing.