The Beach of Dreams Part 18

Then she was chasing penguins along the beach, riding on a sea elephant towards that absolute oblivion which is the brand of sleep they serve at Kerguelen.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BIRDS

It rained off and on for three days, but rain in Kerguelen is not the same as rain in England, just as rain at Windmere is not the same as rain at Birmingham. It does not depress, especially when you are busy.

In those three days she made three journeys to the break in the cliffs to recover the things she had left there and she made her journeys, not to put too fine a point on it, with nothing on but the oilskin coat, the blanket she used for a sack got hopelessly soaked and her head was exposed to the rain owing to the fact that the sou'wester was in the cave where the dead man lay, but she got used to it, especially as neuralgia and colds are unknown in Kerguelen.

The loss of her only towel, the lump of cotton waste, was far worse than the loss of the sou'wester and would have been worse still only that she had other things to think about, especially on these journeys. They were terrible and required all her fort.i.tude to make them, and they were terrible for a new reason. The birds had got at La Touche. Great predatory birds like cormorants thronged the beach opposite the cave, she could see them going in and out of the cave and she could hear them quarrelling in there in the darkness.

Then, on her last journey, as she was preparing to come back, happening to glance that way she saw a gull like a Burgomaster coming out of the cave mouth and pulling after it something long like a rope upon which the other gulls flung themselves. She turned and ran.

She had saved everything but one full bag of biscuits; she determined to leave them. If worst came to the worst there was bread stuff in the cache.

That night the memory of what she had seen haunted her sleep. It was as though La Touche, unable to get at her in the material world was determined to torment her in the imaginary.

She lay awake listening to the whale birds crying and the divers mewing and quarrelling like cats, then, dropping asleep, she was awakened at dawn by a new sound. Outside on the beach she heard a moaning like the voice of someone in pain.

She raised herself on her elbow. It was a human voice without any manner of doubt. It ceased, and springing to her feet she came out. But there was no human being on the beach, nothing but the bulky forms of the great sea bulls, and quite close to the cave a smaller form, a female that had landed during the night and had just given birth to a baby, a thing like a slug which she was fondling with her flippers.

Then in the strengthening light the girl could make out here and there on the beach the forms of other females, and by noon that day there were hundreds and hundreds, and on the next day the beach was one vast nursery. It was the first great act in the life history of these sea people towards which the girl's heart was going out more and more, and as she sat that day watching the mothers and their babies, and the great old bulls shuffling about like heavy fathers, sometimes she would smile and sometimes, sitting and watching, her mind would wander away lost and trying to grapple with the great mystery of which all this was only a part.

They were so human, so warm to the heart, and yet only a few days ago there was nothing here but the rocks and the cold and trackless sea.

Then she noticed that to-day the bulls were not sunning themselves lazily, although the sun was out. They seemed disturbed, moving about aimlessly, lifting themselves on their flippers and now and then raising their short trunks.

Sometimes a female would make as if to get back to the sea but she was always headed off by a bull.

When dusk fell it seemed that the sentries were doubled, to judge by the noise of the flopping and moving about. The girl came to the cave entrance and looked, and lo and behold! every bull had cleared down towards the sea edge. She could see them stretching away into the dim distance, a hedge of vast forms broken and moving here and there, but always restored.

She thought that this line of defence was to keep the females back from the water, yet there seemed more than mere precaution at the bottom of the general disturbance that filled the beach. Then as she lay awake she could hear now and then a distant roar and once a big bull only a few hundred yards from the cave took it into his head to give tongue with a blast like the first deep "woof" of a siren, then came another sound quite close to the cave entrance, a sound like the broken lapping of ripples, interrupted by movements and little snorts and sighs. It was a baby seal sucking away at the teats of its mother. The pair was just outside the cave.

CHAPTER XX

Vae VICTIS

A Howling wind that rose at midnight carrying niagaras of rain oversea from the mountains sank at dawn leaving a clear sky and a falling sea.

As she came out into the early morning light she could see boosts of spray all along the rocks, but by the time she had tidied things up and finished her breakfast these had vanished and the water was coming in, rolling lazily, and the sounds of the breakers came sleepy and evenly s.p.a.ced as though ruled by a metronome.

The bulls no longer lined the sh.o.r.e, though keeping close to the water they had broken up into groups, yet still the sense of disturbance was there pervading the beach like an atmosphere.

The tide was just turning back from the flood, and as she stood watching she noticed the curious fact that not a single bull was taking to the water; ordinarily, here and there along the rocks, there was always some monster taking a header, some vast bulk beaching in a potter of foam.

This morning there was nothing of this sort.

Picking her way between the mothers and their babies she came down to the sea edge, choosing a broad s.p.a.ce left vacant because of the bad landing conditions. The rocks here were higher, forming a miniature cliff some four or five feet in height and from this point looking seaward something caught her eye.

Three black objects moving in a line were making a long ripple on the swell. They were the heads of three sea elephants moving like one. Then the line became the segment of a circle bending in sh.o.r.e. But the swimmers were not going to land; they kept parallel to the rocks and a few hundred yards out, and as they pa.s.sed she could see clearly the great heads and sometimes the ma.s.sive shoulders rising and washing away the water and the eyes, as the heads swung now and then sh.o.r.ewards, wicked eyes that seemed to blaze with the light of anger or battle.

She was not alone in observing them. They had been spotted by a trumpet-voiced sentry and instantly the whole place was in commotion.

The air split with a roar that pa.s.sed along from section to section of the beach whilst the cliffs resounded and a thousand sea-gulls rose as if from nowhere, crying, cat-calling and making a snowstorm in the sunlight.

On the roar and as if destroyed by it the three heads vanished.

Then, far out, they reappeared, only to dive again, leaving the sea blank, but for a school of porpoises pa.s.sing along on their quiet business a mile away towards the east.

The girl sat watching. There was something in all this of greater import than the appearance of three swimming sea elephants. The beach told her that. Not a bull in all that vast herd but was in motion, either helping to crowd the females back towards the cliffs or patrolling the rocks.

She could see them here and there rising up on their hind-quarters as though to get a better view of the sea. They reminded her of dogs begging for biscuits. Then, turning her eyes seaward again she saw a black spot; it was a moving head. Then another broke the surface and another, till in a moment, and for a mile-long stretch, hundreds of heads appeared, all driving sh.o.r.ewards and then dipping and vanishing only to reappear still closer in and closing on the beach with the swiftness of destroyers.

Then she knew, and, springing up, turned to run; but her retreat was cut off towards the caves by the females herded up and, before she could collect her thoughts, the army of invasion was flinging itself from the water, and the whole sea beach from end to end was filled with the thunder of battle.

For days the lone bulls had been cruising at sea waiting and watching till all the females were on sh.o.r.e under guard of their husbands. So it happened every year as now, ending in a battle for the possession of wives, a battle waged without quarter and with a fury whose sound reached the echoes of the hills.

Safe on the little rock plateau she watched the thunderous onslaught, frightened and then terrified and crying out.

The invaders drove in from the sea like the sweep of a curved sword.

They struck the beach first a mile away and the battle ran towards her like fire along tinder, boomed towards her ever loudening till it broke to right and left where the sea bulls flung themselves on the rocks and the land bulls charged the on-comers like battering rams. Some were hurled back, only to return again, others held their ground. Then the real business began whilst the ground trembled and the air shook and the rocks poured blood.

Round her, and for a mile away, they fought like rams and they fought like dogs and they fought like tigers, and over the roaring siren sounds of the fight the gulls flew like the fume of it, screaming and swooping and circling in spirals, and through everything like the continuous thud-thud of a propeller came the dunch of tons of flesh meeting tons of flesh head on, shoulder on, or side on.

She saw bulls ripped beyond belief, with shoulders slashed as if by the down strokes of a sword, yet still fighting as though untouched, with rumps raised and tails up and teeth in the necks of their enemies, one had his eye torn out, yet tremendous and victorious he was literally punching his antagonist back into the sea.

The foam broke red and suddy; she saw that, just as she had seen the name of the _Albatross_ in the tremendous moment of the great ship's eclipse, and, just as the name, the red breaking foam seemed to concentrate in itself the whole terror of the business.

Then, standing like a person helpless in a dream during the full hour that the battle raged, she saw the females break bounds and spread over the rocks carrying or pushing their young as if to get closer to the fight, and then she saw the battle beginning to break. Here and there bulls beaten and done for were taking to the sea and over all the beach the fight had spread inwards towards the cliffs. The sea bulls were beating the land bulls as a whole, interpenetrating them, getting closer to the females, herding the vanquished out.

And she saw, now, as though a curtain had been raised, that the whole great battle was between individuals.

The bulls fresh from the sea though attacking _en ma.s.se_ were under the dominion of no enmity in common, each had come to find a rival and having found him had no eyes for anything else. Nor having once conquered did he pursue.

Another, and a wonderful thing, shewed up: the females had grouped themselves as if to be taken, and now on the clearing beach could be seen family parties, some under the dominion of their new lords and masters, some still being fought for.

So it hung, dwindling little by little till at last only two warriors were left like the last-blazing point of the fight.

They were the biggest of the two herds; they looked as though they had been rolled in gore and they seemed equally furious and equally exhausted. All their rage was in their eyes. Too beaten to bite they could only boost one against another like two schoolboys trying to push one another off a form.

It seemed a miserable and tame ending of their tremendous struggle and she recognized, or thought she recognized, that the biggest of them was the bull who had followed her that day like a dog towards the river.

This shouldering and pushing was his last effort to hold to his wife and family. In war it is the last step that counts, could he make it? Then a strange thing happened. The two monsters paused in their pushing, relaxed, and seemed for a moment to forget the existence of one another.

That tremendous weariness lasted for a minute and then they woke up and the biggest bull began to shuffle off to the sea.