, a French boat, bound from Sydney to Cape Town and
Marseilles.

Raft, the day before, had taken the Chinese mate down to the cabin and
shewed him Chang's money and had presented it to him and the crew in
pantomime.

It was honesty. It was also a good stroke. There was no trouble when the
_Carcassonne_, her huge bulk rolling gently to the swell, dropped a
boat, though indeed had the companions of Chang wished to raise trouble
they would have found themselves seriously handicapped, dumb as they
were in every language but their own.

Chang had been their linguist as well as their leader. They had
literally lost their tongue.

PART VI

CHAPTER XXXV

MARSEILLES

On board the _Carcassonne_ the girl had broken down as though all the
exhaustion she had defied had waited for that moment to fall upon her.

But the energy that had held her above defeat and had given her hope
when things seemed hopeless was there, undestroyed, and when the turning
point came she rallied swiftly. She came on deck one morning where
Bathurst lay a point invisible beyond the blue sea to starboard and
sitting in a deck chair made friends with the other passengers.

It seemed to her almost impossible that the same world should hold
Kerguelen and at the same time this paradise of azure blue sky and tepid
wind.

Raft had told her story before reaching Cape Town and the loss of the
_Gaston de Paris_ was now old news in Europe, and the fact that of all
the _Gaston's_ crowd only the beautiful Cleo de Bromsart had been saved.

Raft had joined the crew of the _Carcassonne_, sleeping in the foc's'le,
where there were several English speaking sailors, and as much out of
his element as a man used only to masts and spars can be on a
steamboat. However, he swabbed decks and did odd jobs without a grumble
and he was swabbing the deck on the morning she came up; he dropped the
business for a moment to take the two hands she held out to him.

All through that time below she had been wanting Raft and his big hand
to pull her through. Satisfied, knowing he was on board and all right,
but wanting him all the same.

On the old barque once or twice had come the stray thought of how Raft's
figure would accommodate itself against the background of the world she
knew.

Well, here was the world she knew, or part of it; a deck, clean as a
ball-room floor and as spacious, passengers in deck chairs, reading
novels, and a manicured French surgeon ready t