The Beach of Dreams: A Romance

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE BAY

  It took them till dusk to reach the foot of the western rise of ground;here they slept under a rock, continuing their way next morning,climbing till they reached the summit of the rise and keeping theircourse along the edge of a cliff that fell a sheer three hundred feet tothe shore below.

  Sometimes Raft peeped over the cliff edge and once the girl drew closeand looked, too, dizzy with the height, made more dreadful by the gullsflying far below.

  At noon, far ahead of them, they saw something that made them pause; alittle mound. As they drew closer they knew. It was another cache, acache made of heaped earth and loose stones with about a foot of signpost protruding from it. The post had been broken off in some storm andblown away.

  "There'll be stuff under there," said Raft, "and if we have to go backit'll come in handy. It's a pointer to the bay anyhow; there must besome landin' place near here, we've only got to keep on."

  They sat down and rested and had some food, eating as much as theywanted now that they had a store to depend on. They had drunk twicethat morning from pot holes still half-filled with the rain of a fewdays ago and they had no need of water--it is the one thing a man neverneeds in Kerguelen. They were in good spirits; the haunting fear thattheir provisions might not be enough to last them for the return journeywas gone; also, if the bay were near, they could remain now some time,even take up their quarters here to wait on the chance of a ship.

  The idea came to them to make a burrow into the cache, now, working withthe harpoon and their hands, and for the purpose of verifying thecontents; but they put it away, the desire to get on drove them like awhip and they went on, halting towards dusk and sleeping in a hollowthat gave them shelter from the wind that was blowing from the south.

  Towards dawn the wind changed to the west and at the first rays of lightRaft awoke, sat up and sniffed. Then he laid his hand on the girl'sshoulder.

  "Smell that!" cried he.

  She sat up, her eyes half-blind with sleep.

  "Smell the wind!" said Raft.

  She turned her face to the west. On the wind was coming the ghost of asmell, faint and horrible and soul-searching.

  "That's a ship," said Raft.

  "A ship!"

  "Boiling down blubber. I struck that smell once, seven years ago; it'sblubber. I reckon we're all right." He heaved himself on to his feetand the girl half-rose, kneeling, and looked at him.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sure as sure; smell it."

  Then, as she sniffed again, she knew. That was not a nature smell;horrible though it was it was not the tragic smell of corruption. It hadsomething, almost one might say, low down about it, little, mean,business-like--it was her first sniff of returning Civilization, thefirst impression on an olfactory sense cleared and cleaned by the windsof Kerguelen.

  She looked at Raft. He was standing, shading his eyes as though staringat the smell. The dawn was at his back, and across the dawn a flight ofwild duck was making in from the sea.

  Imagine a person walking in a garret from absolute penury to findhimself a millionaire. Such a person, were he normal, would feel whatthe girl felt as the message of that noxious odour struck home to hermind.

  Her teeth chattered a little as she rose to her feet. She could notspeak and she had to hold her lower jaw with her hand to still it. Thenthe muscles of her throat did all sorts of queer things on their ownaccount and a violent feeling of sickness seized her that would haveended in an attack of vomiting had it not passed as quickly as it came.Raft, who had ceased staring to the west, saw how she was taken and puthis hand on her shoulder.

  "You'll be all right in a bit," said he, "it comes hard at first. I'veseen chaps go clean off their heads sniffin' land after three months ofhell and weather. We'll start in a bit, there's no call to hurry, andI'll just take a walk to get the stiffness out of my legs."

  Off he went, away and away, disappearing beyond a dip in the ground.

  She knew that he would be away at least half an hour. Thoughtful as amother for her comfort, yet almost as outspoken, sometimes, as a nurse,he was wonderful.

  The dawn broke broader and stronger, peaceful and grey, promising acontinuance of the fine weather that had now lasted for three days,three days without wind or rain or threat from the mountains that satthis morning far away and clear cut against the sky.

  Then as they went on their way the sun broke over the edge of the highlands and gulls rising above the cliff edge flitted like birds born ofsnow and fire.

  They stopped for ten minutes to breakfast, then they went on, and nowsuddenly came something new. On the wind they could hear the sound ofgulls quarrelling, a sound quite distinct from the ordinary mewing andwheezing of the gulls at peace.

  "We're near there," said Raft. "Hark at the gulls, they're fighting overthe scraps. Them chaps, whoever they are, have been killing seals andboiling the blubber. The bay's there."

  He pointed to a higher rise in the ground just before them and to thefact that the land from there sloped down inland at a terrific rate.

  He was right.

  Ten minutes walking brought them to the end of their journey and to theedge of a cliff two hundred feet high. It was as though a giant hadtaken a gouge and cut a bay right through the sea cliffs. Far across thewater of the bay before them the land rose again in a precipice steep asthe one on whose edge they stood.

  The ripples of the bay washed in on a beach of black pebbles easilyreached by the declivity of the land and on the beach, stewing likewitches' cauldrons, queer looking try-pots were sending up their smoke.Near the pots carcases of sea-bulls lay ripped and gory and beingcleared of their blubber by small men, strange-looking, stripped to thewaist and with arms and chests splashed by blood.

  But the clove in this devil's mixture was the ship moored in the cliffshadows, a small ship like a withered kernel in the shell of the bay,barque-rigged, antiquated, high pooped, almost with the lines of a junk.One might have fancied her designer to have taken for his model some oldpicture of the ships of Drake.

  The try-pots, carcases and busy men left Raft unmoved. The ship held hiswhole mind.

  "Lord! Look at her," said he.