The Beach of Dreams. H. De Vere Stacpoole

her now as what it really is, life itself, as civilized men know life, a thing outside ourselves yet of ourselves and without which the circling of the sun is as the circling of a pointer on a blank dial—. This thing was gone.

      La Touche had got more forward and was smoking and, though the wind was with them, a faint scent of tobacco smoke came on the spill of the wind from the sail. Bompard was chewing, spitting occasionally to starboard and wiping his mouth with the back of his bronzed tattooed hand.

      The vague scent of the tobacco threaded up all sorts of things in the girl’s mind: Madame de Warens, the streets of Paris, the deck of the yacht. She remembered the piece of embroidery work she had been engaged on last night, and then a scrap of conversation she had overheard between the doctor and the artist towards the end of dinner, they were talking of the passéistes and futurists, of the work of Pablo Picasso, of Sunyer, of Boccioni and Durio, arguing with extraordinary passion about the work of these people.

      “There’s weather or something over there,” said La Touche who had slipped down and was seated on the bottom boards with his back to a thwart; he nodded his head towards Kerguelen.

      Around one of the highest peaks a lead-coloured cloud had wrapped itself turban-wise, and even as they looked the cloud turban increased in volume and height, mournful and monstrous as some djin-born vision of the Arabian story-tellers.

      “That’s snow,” said Bompard, “and by the twist of it it’s in a whirlwind.”

      “Bon Dieu, what a place,” said La Touche.

      “You may say that,” said Bompard, “but that’s nothing, it’s when we come to make a landing we’ll find what we are against.”

      “Oh, we’ve got so far we’ll finish it,” said La Touche.

      Then began a dismal argument, full of words and repetitions but with few ideas, and from the trend of it the curious fact appeared that La Touche, the ship’s grouser and dismal James, was taking the optimistical side, whilst Bompard, generally cheerful, was the pessimist.

      La Touche’s optimism was, perhaps, the outcome of fear. What they had gone through was nothing to the prospect of having to make a landing on that tremendous coast, simply because what they had gone through had come on them suddenly. This thing had to be faced in cold blood. The coward in La Touche refused to face it fully, refused to face the fact that with this swell and with all the chances of uncharted and unknown reefs and rocks the risk was appalling. He grew angry.

      “Don’t be a coward over it,” said he. That set Bompard off, and for a moment the girl thought they would have come to blows. Then it passed and they were as friendly as before, just as though nothing had happened.

      Their talk and the whole business had been conducted as though the girl were not there. In the few hours since daybreak, quarter deck and fo’c’sle had vanished. They had become welded into one community, all equal, and the lady was no longer the lady. There was no hint of disrespect, no hint of respect. They were all equal, equal sharers in the chances of the sea.

      More, the sex standard seemed to have vanished with the social. Nothing remained but the human, for that is the rule with the open boat at sea.

      When they lowered the sail for screening purposes, when they raised it again, it was all the same, for the human level is above all little things.

      Towards noon and with the coast now closer and well-defined, La Touche sighted something ahead. It was a rock, high and pointed like a black spire protruding from the sea and standing there like an outpost of the land.

      “Had we better give it a wide berth?” asked La Touche. “Maybe there’s more near it.”

      “The sea is running smooth enough by it,” said Bompard. “I don’t see breakers, and we don’t draw anything to speak of.” He held on.

      The sun was shewing through breaks in the high clouds and its light fell on the water and the rock, pied with roosting guillemots. As the boat drew near the guillemots gave tongue. The sound came against the wind fierce and complaining, antagonistic like the voice of loneliness crying out against them and telling them to be gone—be gone—be gone!

      Cléo, as they passed, saw the green water sliding up and falling from the polished black rock surface. The sight seemed to bring the hostile coast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying of the guillemots as it died away behind them seemed a barrier passed, never to be re-crossed.

CHAPTER VII

       Table of Contents

THE COAST

       Table of Contents

      And now, away at sea and leagues from the coast they were approaching, vast islands disclosed themselves suddenly through the sea haze, standing like giants waist deep in the ocean, whilst the coast itself with its cliffs and rocks of black basalt and dolerite shewed clear, extraordinarily clear, with every detail defined in the sunlight, from the rifts in the basalt to the gulls blowing about in legions and the great sea-geese hovering and fishing.

      The coast was ferocious, and the whole country from the sea foam to the foothills looked tumbled and new, with the newness of infinite antiquity. The last thunders of creation seemed scarcely to have died away, the last throe scarcely to have ceased, leaving million-ton rock cast on rock and the new, shear-cut cliffs spitting back their first taste of the bitter sea.

      “There is nowhere to land,” said the girl. She was shuddering as a dog shudders when overstrung.

      “Ay, it’s a brute beast of a place,” said Bompard, “well, we must nose along on the lookout. There’s no coast but hasn’t some landing-place where a boat can push in. Y’See it’s not like a ship. A boat can go where a ship can’t.”

      He shifted the helm a bit, keeping the coast parallel to them on the starboard side.

      “Might those islands be better to go to?” asked she, “they couldn’t be worse than that.”

      La Touche suddenly grew excited. “Bon Dieu,” cried he, “what a thing to be saying! Those islands, nothing but rocks—nothing but rocks. Here there is land, at all events, good land one can put one’s foot on; out there there’s nothing but rocks. Rather than go out there I would swim ashore—I would—”

      “Oh, close up,” said Bompard, “don’t talk about swimming—maybe you’ll have to.”

      “One can always drown,” said La Touche.

      It was Bompard who next broke the silence.

      “I’ve been over cliffs worse than those, for gulls eggs,” said he, “take one coast with another, coasts are pretty much the same, you get bad bits and easy bits, that is all.”

      La Touche said nothing.

      As they drew on the great islands out at sea ranged themselves more definitely and the tremendous coast to starboard shewed more clearly its deep cut canons, its sea arches and absolute desolation.

      The sea had fallen, though the wind still held steady, and this surface calmness, under-run by a gentle swell, served only to emphasize the vastness of the view. The island seemed immensely remote and immense in size, the far snow-covered mountains the mountains of a land where giants had lived and from which they had departed countless ages ago.

      Oyster catches passed the boat with their melancholy cry, but the fishing gannets and the swimming puffins seemed scarcely to heed the intruders. Puffins swimming a biscuit toss away as though they had never learned the fear of man.

      They had drawn nearer shore so that the boom of the swell in the caves and on the rocks came to them with the crying of the shore birds; passing