said the girl, unconscious as to what he was referring
to. "I know you, I have seen you often on deck--who is the other man?
Oh, is it possible that we are the only people left?"

Bompard, without replying, swung his head round, then he rose and came
over the thwarts. He caught La Touche by the leg.

"Gaston--rouse up--the lady is alive. It's me. Bompard."

La Touche sat up, his hair towsled, his face creased, he seemed furious
about something and pushing Bompard away stared round and round at sea
and sky as if in search of someone.

"Bon Dieu," cried La Touche. "The cursed boat." He spat as though
something bitter were in his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of
his hand. He did not seem to care a button whether the lady were alive
or not. He had been dreaming that he was in a tavern, just raising a
glass to his mouth, and Bompard had awakened him to this.

The girl could not repeat the question to which there seemed no answer,
she crawled into the stern sheets and sitting there, half bent, watched
the two men. An observer perched in the sky above might have noticed the
curious fact that on board the forsaken boat quarter deck and fo'c'sle
still held sway, that the lady was the lady and the hands the hands,
that Bompard was talking in an undertone, saying to La Touche: "Come,
get alive, get alive," and that La Touche, after his first outburst, was
holding himself in. They were old yachtsmen, no disaster could shake
that fact.

La Touche, rising and taking his seat on a thwart and looking everywhere
but in the direction of the girl, as though ashamed of something, began
cutting up some tobacco in a mechanical way, whilst Bompard, on his
knees, was exploring the contents of the forward locker. La Touche was a
fair-haired man, younger than Bompard, a melancholy looking individual
who always seemed gazing at the worst of things. He spoke now as the
girl drew his attention to something far away in the east, something
sketched vaguely in the sky as though a picture lay there beyond the
haze.

"Ay, that's Kerguelen," said La Touche.

Bompard, on his knees, and with a maconochie tin in his left hand,
raised his head and looked.

"Ay, that's Kerguelen," said Bompard.

"And look," said the girl, pointing towards Kerguelen. "Is not that the
sail of a boat, away ever so far--or is it a gull? Now it's gone. Look,
there it is again."

Bompard looked.

"I see nothing," said he, "gull, most like--there wouldn't be