Beach of Dreams — 12 - Part II, Chapters 15, 16, and 17

THE STROKE

As she lay, listening, through the black darkness and the singing of the sea came a faint sound as of something dragging itself along the sand at the cave entrance.

She clutched the knife and sat up.

A waft of wind brought with it a tang of stale tobacco and rain-wet clothes.

It was La Touche.

She drew up her feet and sat crouched against the sailcloth, the knife half-held in her lap, her fingers nerveless, her mind paralysed with the knowledge that now, immediately, she would _have_ to fight, that the Beast was all but upon her.

She knew.

She could hear him breathing now and the faint sound of his hands feeling gently over the floor of the cave.

He was searching for her, the fume of him filled the place, he was almost in touch with her, yet still she sat helpless as a little child, paralysed in the blackness, as a bird before a crawling cat.

Yet her right hand as though endowed with a volition of its own was tightening its grasp upon the hilt of the knife.

She had no longer reasoning power.

Reasoning power and energy seemed now in the possession of the knife.

Then something touched her left boot and at the touch her hand struck out into the darkness, blindly and furiously, driving the knife home to the hilt in something that fell with a choking sound across her feet.

She forced her feet from the thing that had suddenly fallen on them, rose, sprang across it and passed through the cave entrance with the surety of a person moving in broad daylight.

Then the pouring rain on her face brought her to her full senses and recognition of what had happened.

The knife was still in her hand and her hand was sticky and damp.

She said to herself: "That is his blood."

The thought that perhaps she had killed him did not occur to her.

The fear of him was still so intense, that it made him alive, alive somewhere in the surrounding darkness, and waiting to seize her.

Then she began to steal off towards the sound of the sea.

Twice as she went she stopped and turned, ready to strike again, then when the water was washing round her feet she came up the beach a few paces and crouched down.

The sea was at her back and the haunting dread of being followed vanished.

It was now that she asked herself the question: "Have I killed him?"

Meaning:--"Have I freed myself of him,"--hoping this was so.

The terror behind her having vanished she was now brave.

It seemed to her that the sound of the sea had become sharper; then she realized that the sound of the rain had ceased.

Her mind seemed working in a dual manner and she had not fully recognized the cessation of the rain till the sound of the sea clinched the fact.

Through the clear night now came the melancholy crying of the whale birds, and through the broken clouds a ray of the moon shewed a faint light in which the cliffs began to stand out.

The incoming tide washed round her so that she had to move, it seemed determined to drive her up to the caves.

She could see now the whole beach desolate of life and before her, vaguely sketched in the cliff wall, the cave openings.

She came along the sea edge till she reached the break in the cliffs, then, looking behind her again to make sure, she took refuge in the bushes.

For the last few yards before reaching them she seemed wading through tides of nothingness.

In the shelter of the bushes she forgot everything.

CHAPTER XVI ALONE

She was awakened by the light of day.

Kerguelen had cleared its face of clouds and the new risen sun was on sea and mountains and land.

A whole family of rabbits were disporting themselves close to her in a clear space between the bushes and as she sat up they darted off, a glimpse of their cotton white tails shewing for a moment in the sun.

She was stiff from the damp, her clothes were wet despite the oilskin coat which she had left open, and her throat was sore, every bone ached as though she had been beaten.

Her soul felt sick.

It was as though the crawling beast of the night before had crawled over it like a slug, poisoning it.

The knife lay beside her; she picked it up and looked at it; there were red traces upon the hilt and the lines in the palm of her right hand were red.

She rubbed it clean with the damp leaves of the bushes, then she stood up, shaking and weak, heedless of everything but the friendly touch of the sun.

Her fear was gone, but the effect of it remained in a sense of bruising and injury.

Out on the beach there was nothing, nothing but the breaking sea and the flying gulls and lines of long legged gulls stalking or standing on the sands, the 'get-away--get-away' of the kittiwakes came across the water and the barking of brent geese from beyond the rocks of the Lizard Point.

The boat lay there on its side, everything was the same.

She drew towards the caves.

Nothing stirred there.

Then she halted and, changing her course, came right down to the water's edge.

From here she could see the three cave mouths dark cut in the cliff.

She watched them for a moment as though expecting something to appear, then she came up towards them, walking more cautiously as she drew near, just as she had walked on the plain where the death traps were.

The light shone into the cave where she had slept.

She saw a naked foot with toes dug into the sand and beyond the foot a form lying on its side.

Then she drew back with a cry; something was moving there.

A rabbit dashed out of the cave and scuttered away along the cliff base.

Then she knew.

La Touche was dead, he would never crawl again.

She had killed him.

She cast the knife on the sand and wiped the palm of her hand on her dress half unconsciously, gazing at the foot.

The terror of him had burned away anything in her mind that might have fed remorse.

She had not killed him consciously.

Searching her memory she could vaguely recollect having struck out against something appalling in the darkness.

Now she knew and guessed all, and she could have hated him only that death kills hatred.

She came to the mouth of the men's cave and sat down in the sun, the soreness of her throat, the weariness of her very bones, the feel of her horrible wet clothes, all these filled her with a craving for the sun and its warmth and light, fierce as the craving for drink.

She spread out her hands to it, then, with shaking fingers she began to take off her clothes.

They clung to her like evil things.

Had this been a day of pouring rain she might just have lain down and died.

Without getting up, and leaning on her elbow, she spread out the skirt and coat and other things on the sand beside her, then she stretched her aching limbs to the warmth.

The wind had fallen to almost a dead calm, and as she lay she saw little rabbits stealing out to play in the sunshine on the sands.

She watched them running in circles like things on wheels and moving by clockwork.

Then she closed her eyes, but still she saw them circling, circling, circling.

Then she was in the toy department of the Magazin du Louvre and a shop-woman was shewing her toy rabbits that ran in circles, five francs each.

She awoke at noon; the sore throat was gone, her bones no longer ached and the great beach lay under the heat of noon, humming like a stretched string to the touch of the sea.

Her left arm and side and thigh were scorched by the sun, but that was nothing; the sense of illness was gone, and her mind, quite clear and renewed, had regained its balance.

She remembered everything.

La Touche was lying there in the cave, dead.

The knife that had killed him she could see lying on the sand where she had dropped it; she had killed him.

All these monstrous facts seemed old, settled and done with and of little more interest than the things and events of a year ago.

What seemed new was the beach and its desolation--its emptiness.

It was as though a crowd of people had suddenly vanished from it; a crowd that any moment might return.

The place seemed waiting and watching.

She cast her eyes towards the rocks of the Lizard Point and then towards the cave mouth; then hurriedly she began to put on her clothes, now dry and warm, and having dressed she stood for a moment again looking about her.

She could see the penguins in the distance going through their endless evolutions, and the rhythmical sound of the sea came from near and far mixed with the chanting and crying of the gulls.

At any moment Bompard might appear labouring over those rocks, at any moment La Touche might step from the cave where he lay.

That is what the beach told her, though she knew that the forms of the two men would appear no more; that she was here alone, utterly alone.

She took shelter from the sun in the men's cave.

Bompard's tinder box was lying on the sand and half a box of Swedish matches.

The men's blankets were tossed in a corner and the provisions and utensils were in their proper place.

On a plate by the bags of biscuits lay the remains of the beef from last night's supper; she took it and ate it with a biscuit, sitting on the floor of the cave and staring before her out at the strip of beach where the boat lay on its side with the sea breaking beyond.

On the day the men had gone off inland on their expedition she had terrified herself with fancies of what it would be like were she to find herself here alone.

Her imagination had gone far from the reality.

The thing had happened; the men were gone, gone forever, yet she was not alone.

They filled the place by their absence far more than they had filled it by their presence.

The louder cry of a gull outside seemed hailing Bompard, the rustle of a rabbit on the sands seemed the coming of La Touche, the sound of the sea spoke of them, the boat seemed only waiting for them to launch it.

They, whom a million years would not bring back.

She felt neither regret for the fate of La Touche nor sorrow for the fate of Bompard, all that seemed unreal, just as the darkness and terror of the night before seemed unreal.

The real thing that touched her through everything was Expectancy.

Expectancy, ghostly and attenuated, yet ubiquitous.

It brought her to the cave mouth before she had finished her meal.

The beach seemed to say to her: "Come out and look!"

and she came out and looked, and the line of foam and the wheeling or stalking gulls held her for a moment as though saying--a moment, a moment more and you will see something.

They will come.

Any moment now you may see Bompard crossing the rocks.

La Touche is not in that cave, he is here, everywhere.

She came back into the cave and sat down and finished her meal, the food had renewed her strength and with renewed strength her indifference to all that had happened began to pass.

She had killed La Touche.

The reality of that fact was coming home to her now; she did not reason in the least on the matter saying he deserved to be killed, that had all been settled long ago in her mind, but the fact that she had killed him was standing strongly out before her, also the facts that he was dead and lying quite close to her and that though she did not mind his dead body she was beginning to dread something else.

Dead, he was beginning to frighten her just as he had frightened her when living.

Then she found that it was just the same with Bompard.

He was frightening her too.

Suppose one or the other were to peep in at her, and nod at her--she pictured it and then crushed the picture in her mind and got up and came out again and stood in the sun.

Then she came down to the boat and stood with her hand on the gunnel, and, for a moment as she stood thus, the terror of utter loneliness came to her in a hundred tongues and ways, and always with reference to the men who had vanished.

It was impossible to stay here alone--alone--absolutely alone; like a frightened child her mind appealed against this terror; it climbed the vacant skies and passed over the desolate hills in search of comfort.

Was there a God?

To whom could she run for comfort, for escape--?

As if in answer to her wild but unspoken question came a far-off roar brought on the wind from the great seal beach.

CHAPTER XVII FRIENDS IN DESOLATION

She turned her face that way and stood for a moment with the faint breeze blowing her hair.

Then she came running up the beach to the caves.

In the men's cave she stood glancing rapidly about her like a person in a burning house seeking what he may save.

She picked up the tinder box and the box of matches and put them in her pocket.

Then she began to remove everything from the cave.

Making a sack of one of the blankets, she filled it with as much as she could drag along and brought it to the break in the cliffs where she dumped the contents.

It took her three journeys.

Then, having collected everything in a big pile, she sat down for a moment to rest.

The things would be safe here till she could fetch them to her new home, and the weather would not hurt them, except, maybe, the biscuits.

The thought of the biscuits troubled her, and the picture of them lying exposed in one of the torrential rains.

Then she caught sight of a cleft in the basalt.

It was dry and big enough to contain the bags and she placed them there having taken out some of their contents.

These and a couple of tins of meat she placed in one of the blankets, making a sack of it.

Then she remembered the knife she had left lying on the sand before the cave where the dead man lay.

She fought against the idea of returning for it.

Then her will made her go.

As she picked up the knife she glanced once again into the cave and once again caught a glimpse of the naked foot with the toe dug into the sand;

then, placing the knife in its sheath and running like a frightened child she reached the break, caught up the sack, the extra blanket and the axe, which she had hidden among the bushes, and started.

It was not a heavy load, fortunately.

Had it been heavy she would have dropped it, for, once moving, she had to run.

The idea that she was deserting people who did not want to be deserted pursued her; now and again she stopped and turned for a moment--nothing; the Lizard rocks lay just the same and the beach and the forsaken boat, just the same, and the jeering gulls; yet, when she turned again to go on she had to run.

Near the great skull her right bootlace, getting loose, nearly tripped her.

She sat down and tied it and then went on, walking now, but swiftly, till, nearing the river and in full sight of her new companions, she found herself suddenly free.

The hounds of Fear had given up the chase.

The great sea elephants had driven them away.

Here was no longer loneliness.

The great beasts sunning themselves on the flat rocks seemed more numerous and, as she crossed the river, a monster coming in from the sea in a thunder of foam saluted the land with a roar.

She recognized, or thought she recognized, the great bull that had followed her, he was lying, to-day, half-tilted to one side, he looked drunk with sun and laziness and as she came amongst them and sat down, as she had sat that day, she found that though a hundred pairs of eyes were watching her, scarcely a burly figure moved.

They had grown used to her, perhaps, or perhaps they recognized that she did not fear them now in the least, or that she had come for refuge and friendship.

Then she rose up and passing amongst them as a friend amongst friends came towards the caves in the basalt cliffs.

They were smaller than the caves to the west but they were dry and free from water drip.

She chose one and put her bundle down with the axe beside it.

PART III