original things of life still moved and had their being untroubled by
man and untouched by Time.

Bompard shifted the helm, and the boat, heading for the shore and no
longer running before the wind, moved less easily, shipping an
occasional dash of spray.

The change of movement, the dash of spray, the altered course were to
the girl like the turning of a corner. Running with the wind and with a
parallel shore the boat was the world and the coast and island a
panorama. With the twist of the helm Reality made the coast a
destination. Up to this moment the uncertainty of whether they could
land had held her mind, up to this moment all sorts of vague
possibilities, the chance of meeting a ship, the chance of being blown
out to sea, the chance of this or that had come between her and the
realisation of the fact that this prison was hers.

The monstrosity of the idea stood fully revealed only now on that beach
where there was nothing but sand, nothing but rocks, nothing but gulls.
Close in now Bompard let go the sheet and they unstepped the mast, the
boat rocking in the trough of the swell. Then they got the oars out.

As they bent to their work and over the creak of the leather in the
rowlocks the rumble and fume of the seven mile beach came mixed with the
yelping and mewing of the gulls. The boat made slow progress, then a few
yards from the surf line it hung for a moment till the rowers suddenly
gave way and moving like a relieved arrow she came on the crest of a
wave, then the oars came in with a crash and the two men tumbling out
dragged her nose high and dry. They helped the girl out and as they
pulled the boat higher she stood, the wind flicking her oilskin coat
about her and the spindrift blowing in her face.

PART II

CHAPTER VIII

THE AWAKENING

The great beach of Kerguelen shews above tide mark long stretches where
no sand is, only rock. Basalt planed and smoothed by the seas of
countless ages, level as a ball-room floor and broken by rifts and pot
holes, between tide marks these pot holes serve as traps for all sorts
of sea creatures. Once the waves must have beaten right up to the low
and broken basalt cliffs full of caves floored with sand, but volcanic
action raising the beach has pushed the tide mark out leaving a shore
varying in width from half a mile to a few hundred yards.

This is the breeding place of the sea elephant. Half way between the
lizard point and the point further to the e