any boat
from us, they're all gone, unless it was a boat from that hooker we
struck."

"Boat," said La Touche with a dismal laugh. "She got no boat away, she
went down by the bows with the fellows like flies on her, this is the
only boat of the lot that got away."

The girl with her hand shading her eyes was still looking.

"It's gone, whatever it may have been," said she, "can we reach the
land?"

"Why, yes, mademoiselle," said Bompard, "the wind is setting towards
there and we have a sail, I am going to step the mast now when I've
taken stock--well, we won't starve. The tube is provisioned for a full
crew for a fortnight, water too, we won't starve, that's a fact. La
Touche, get a move on and help me with the sail."

"I'm coming," grumbled La Touche.

It seemed to the girl that the minds and the tongues and the movements
of the two men were part of some slow-acting, wooden, automatic
mechanism. Whether they reached the land or not seemed a matter almost
of indifference to them. Accustomed to people who talked much and had
much to talk about she could not understand. All this was part of the
new world in which she found herself, part of the boat itself, of the
mast, now stepped against the grey sky, the waves, the gulls, and that
tremendous outline of mountains now more visible to the east--Kerguelen.
A world of things without thought, or all but thoughtless, things that,
yet, dominated mind more profoundly than the power of mind itself.

Bompard was munching a biscuit he had taken from one of the bread bags
as he worked. She noticed the bag, its texture, and the words
"Traversal--Toulon" stamped on it. The maconochie tin which he had
placed on a seat and a tin of beef with a Libby label held her eyes as
though they were things new and extraordinary. They were. They were
food. She had never seen food before, food as it really is, the barrier
between life and death, food naked and stripped of all pretence.

Bompard coming aft with the sheet shipped the tiller, and, taking his
seat by the girl, put the boat before the wind. La Touche, who had taken
his seat on the after thwart, was engaged in opening the tin of beef.
The girl scarcely noticed him. She was experiencing a new sensation, the
sensation of sailing with the wind and the run of the swell. The boat,
from a dead thing tossing on the waves, had suddenly become a thing
alive, buoyant, eager and full of purpose, silent, too, for the slapping
and buffeting