The Beach of Dreams Part 21

At the name _Gaston de Paris_ Raft nodded his head. Already a suspicion that she might be one of the yacht's crowd had come into his mind, so the news came scarcely as a surprise.

"It was us you hit," said he, "I'm one of the chaps from the old hooker."

"The _Albatross_?"

"That's her."

She said nothing for a moment, looking away over at the islands. She could see the name, still, written as if on the night. Then she remembered the boat sail she had seen when adrift with Bompard and La Touche.

"There were four of us got off," said he, "we struck them islands over there and put in but there was nothing but rocks in that part. Next day we put out, but got blown down the coast; we got smashed landing; all but a chap named Ponting and me went under, but one chap's body was hove up and we stripped him. I've got his boots and his knife in that bundle over there in the cave, and Ponting's. We saved a bag of bread."

He took his seat again on the rock and, placing the cup beside him, took the pipe from his pocket, but he did not light it. He held it, rubbing the bowl reflectively. He seemed to have come to an end of his story.

"Did the other man die?" she asked.

"He went getting gulls' eggs one day," said Raft, "and slipped over the cliff. They're big, the cliffs, down there. I found him all broke up on the rocks. He didn't live more than a minute when I got to him and I had to leave him; the tide was coming up."

"Poor man," said she.

He rose up and, taking the cup, stood for a moment again looking seaward.

"Well, I'll be off down the beach," said he, "you won't be frightened to be here by yourself?"

"No," she replied, "but don't go very far."

"I'll keep in sight," said Raft.

He put the cup in the cave and off he went whilst she sat watching him; everything, life itself, seemed centred in him. A terrible feeling came over her at moments that he might vanish, that, looking away for a moment and turning again she might find him gone and nothing but the beach and the gulls.

Beyond the river he turned and saw her watching him and waved his hand as if to rea.s.sure her. She waved in reply and then sat watching till he reached the figure-head and stood to examine it.

He seemed very small from here. She saw him standing and looking inland, he had seen the cache, no doubt, and he would want to go to it; if he did that he would disappear from sight. But he did not go to it, he kept on always in view, exploring the rocks and the sands and stopping now and then as if to look back.

It seemed to her that he could read her mind and feel her terror of being left alone. Then her mind went back over the last few days.

She had been very near death. She had drunk the last of the water in the tin and had been too feeble to go for more. What had brought her to that pa.s.s? It seemed to her that the rocks, the sea and the sky had slowly sucked her vitality away from her till at last she could not eat, could not walk, could not think. All that time her mind had never thought of loneliness, the thing that was killing her had veiled itself by numbing her brain and weakening her body. But near death her mind had cleared and the great grief of desolation stood before her. Then G.o.d-sent, a form had pushed the grief aside and a hand had taken her lonely hand and a finger had moistened her lips. But it was the knowledge that the hand was a real hand that gave her the first lead back to life.

Then the last three days. The feeling of extreme helplessness and sickness and the knowledge that she was watched over and cared for and thought for--there was no word to express what all that meant. It turned the great rough figure to a spirit, great and tender and benign.

He was coming along back now carrying something he had picked up amongst the rocks. It was a crab.

A great satisfactory two pound crab bound up in kelp ribbon so craftily that it could neither bite nor escape. He put it on the sand for her to look at before taking it off to boil.

The sun was hot and as he stood whilst she admired his prize: "Don't you feel the sun to your head?" asked he.

"No," she replied, "I like it. I had a hat--a sou'wester but it's in a cave away down the beach. There's a dead man there."

"A dead man?" said Raft.

"Yes. I killed him."

"Killed him?"

"It was partly accident. He was one of the sailors. He was a bad man.

The other sailor got lost and never came back and I was left alone with this man. He nearly frightened me to death."

"Swab," said Raft.

"Then one night he crawled into my cave in the dark and I struck out with the knife and it killed him--he's lying there now. I didn't mean to kill him, but he frightened me."

"Swab," said Raft, two tones deeper. Then he laughed as if to himself.

"Well, that's a go," said he. He took a pull at his beard as he contemplated this slayer of men seated on her blankets at his feet. She glanced up and saw that he was laughing and a wan smile came around her eyes, it seemed to him like a glimmer of sunshine from inside of her.

Then bending down he pulled up the blanket that had slipped from her left shoulder and settled it in its place.

"I'll tell you all about it some time," said she, "when I feel stronger."

"Ay, ay," said Raft. Then he went off with the crab to boil it.

As he attended to this business in the cave, half-sitting, half-kneeling before the little fire, he chuckled to himself now and then, and now and then he would bring his great hand down on his thigh with a slap.

The idea of her killing a man seemed to him the height of humour. He didn't put much store on men's lives in general, and none at all on the life of an unknown swab who deserved his gruel. Then he was of the type that admires a fighting thing much more than a peaceful and placid thing, and he felt the pleasure of a man who has rescued a seemingly weak and inoffensive creature only to find that it has pluck and teeth of its own.

She had gone up a lot in his estimation. Besides, her feebleness and forlorn condition had wounded him in a great soft part of his nature where the hurt felt queer. This new knowledge somehow eased the hurt. He could think of her now apart from her condition and think more kindly of her, for the strange fact remains that the very weakness and forlornness that had wakened his boundless compa.s.sion had antagonized him. When he had found the crab the idea had come to him that here was some different sort of food to "put into her;" he was thinking that same thought now but with more enthusiasm. Yes, she had gone up a lot in his estimation.

CHAPTER XXIV

A DREAM

This same Raft whom the fo'c'sle could subdue to the surroundings, making him as faithful a part of the picture as the kerosene lamp, on the beach stood immense both in size and significance.

It was as though the fo'c'sle had the power to dwindle him, the beach, to expand him.

The girl had never seen him in the fo'c'sle so she could not appreciate the difference that environment made in him, and perhaps she saw him ever so slightly magnified, but it seemed to her that he was big enough to form part of the landscape, that he was one with the seven mile beach and the Lizard Point and the great islands and the sea elephants.

Not only had she been crushed down by loneliness; size had helped. Raft seemed to reduce the size of things, so that the seven mile strand and the vast islands and sea s.p.a.ces no longer burdened her, and in some magical way whilst he reduced the proportions of his surroundings they increased his potency and significance. He was in his true setting, part of a vast picture without a frame.

It was not alone his physical dimensions. Bompard had been a big man, but Bompard could not fill that beach. No, it was something else--what we call, for want of a better expression, "the man himself."

Then there was another thing about him, he found food of all sorts where Bompard and La Touche had found nothing; he brought in crabs and cray-fish and penguins eggs, he brought down rabbits with stones. That was his great art. A stone in the hand of Raft was a terrible missile and his aim was deadly.

At the end of a week the girl was able to accompany him along the beach to the cache where he unearthed some stores and came upon the harpoon which he carried back with them.

Then one day he suddenly appeared before her carrying her lost sou'wester. He had gone off down the beach in the direction of the Lizard Point and he came back carrying the hat in his hand. He must have been into the cave where the remains of La Touche lay, but he said nothing about that.