aised an appalling cross sea. Right away to the
islands there was nothing but tumbling foam, waves standing up and
fighting waves in a battle that spread for leagues.

"It's well for us we didn't fall in with this yesterday," said Bompard
"a ship couldn't stand it."

"And what ship will ever poke her nose in here to take us off do you
think?" asked La Touche. "This is what you get every day of the week, if
all accounts are true--this, and worse. I tell you we've come to the
wrong place. There's no getting over it. We've come to the wrong place."

"Well, right or wrong, here we are," said Bompard "Mon Dieu! to hear you
talk you'd think we'd come here on purpose--come, get a move on and
let's have some grub."

He turned into the cave and they fetched out the can of beef they had
opened yesterday, some biscuits, and a water breaker, and sitting at the
cave mouth they ate just as the men of the Stone Age ate, with the palms
of their hands for plates and their fingers for forks. They spoke
scarcely at all. The ill-humor of La Touche seemed like a contagious
disease, even Bompard, the imperturbable, seemed glum.

It was the girl who broke the strain.

Suddenly she began to speak as if giving voice to carefully thought out
ideas. Yet what she said was absolutely spontaneous, the result of a
quick, educated mind suddenly grasping the essentials of their position,
suggestion breeding suggestion.

"There's no use in grumbling," said she. "That wind knocked me down as I
was coming along the beach. I didn't grumble, and there is no use in
thinking. I was thinking as I walked along that I had no brush and comb
to do my hair with, you two have short hair and you can't imagine what
it is to a person with long hair when they find themselves without a
brush and comb. I was grumbling to myself about it when the wind knocked
me down. I want just to tell you what is in my mind: we will die or go
mad if we do not forget everything as much as we can and not think of
to-morrow or yesterday or ships coming to take us off. We have to fight
all sorts of things that don't care in the least for us and we have to
work. Everything here is at work in its own way. Well, we must do as
everything else does or die."

"It's easy to say work," said La Touche munching a biscuit, "but what is
one to work at?"

"We want food for one thing, our provisions won't last forever."

"There's rabbits enough," said Bompard. "Remember those rabbits we saw
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