The Beach of Dreams

been stunned and had passed from that condition int

on her face, a touch from the great

a string. It screamed at her, shifted its position, and then passed, as though blown away on the wind. She sat up. Bompard had drawn away from her and was lying curled up on his side.

never smelt its heart and the savour of its soul; bi

een. Her past life, her own personality, seemed vague and unconnected with her as the past life and personality of anothe

f her immediate environment on board the Gaston de Paris, quite little things and things more important: the silver-plated taps of the bath in the bath-room, adjoining her cabin, the silk curtains of her bunk, the hundred and one trifles that made for comfor

g but life and body, the dress and boots she wore and the yellow oilskin coat that covered her. Her hand resting on the gunnel shewed her that she still wore her rings, exquisite ri

had happened to the Gaston de Paris, of these only the latter possessed any vi

against which she leaned and the spray upon her face, the boat and the me

t at one, try to make one their own, once they manage to break down the barrier of custom that separates the false from the true; that quite common things have a power

d sat up. His rough, weather beaten face was expressionless for a momen

unseen person. "'Tis all true then-" Then, as though

erring to. "I know you, I have seen you often on deck-who is the

d round, then he rose and came over the

he lady is alive.

emed furious about something and pushing Bompard away stare

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

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 a

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 gaz

erguelen," sa

a maconochie tin in his left h

Kerguelen,"

"Is not that the sail of a boat, away ever so far-or

rd lo

wouldn't be any boat from us, they're all gone,

t away, she went down by the bows with the fellows like fli

and shading her eye

may have been," said she

step the mast now when I've taken stock-well, we won't starve. The tube is provisioned for a full crew for

," grumbled

ccustomed 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 wave

d 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.

he 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 ali

he who had managed to open the

helped Bompard and himself, then he scrambled forward, leaving his beef and biscuit o

t was as though the caste difference had

t again when that smash came last night," s

leaning like this, see, on the look out and between two blinks there was the hooker crossing our course or making that way. She'll clear us, maybe, said I to myself, then the engines went full speed and I knew

t was put on and I saw a great ship on the right hand side; she seemed sinking, but I read her name, she was quite clos

alking and eating at the same

sen helped me to get the canvas off her, that was

e ship. I was shouting to the chaps on deck to jump and we'd pick them up, we'd got the oars out then. I tell you I was fuddled up for I'd got it in my head that the ho

aid La Touche, "but I heard you shouting to me to row.

," said

hey lifted the decks off her. S

no one at all

ent, then La Touche said: "There was

away land shewed up, vast in the distance, with a white line of snow-cov

them to, a place where there was nothing. Neither hotels nor houses nor huts, nor men nor women, a place where no landing-stage would receive them, no

d done to her. It was now and not till now that she saw Time befor

e's bath is

the first gon

forms of being, the day which made a person change to its light and the person of ten o'clock in the morning quite different from the person of noon-this thing which we talk of as the day appeared before her now as

ent of tobacco smoke came on the spill of the wind from the sail. Bompard was chewing, spitti

embroidery work she had been engaged on last night, and then a scrap of conversation she had overheard between the doctor and the artist towards the end of dinner, they wer

ho had slipped down and was seated on the bottom boards wit

n-wise, and even as they looked the cloud turban increased in volume and heigh

ard, "and by the twist o

at a place,"

at's nothing, it's when we come to make a

far we'll finish i

he trend of it the curious fact appeared that La Touche, the ship's grouser and dismal Jam

coast, simply because what they had gone through had come on them suddenly. This thing had to be faced in cold blood. The coward in La Touche refused to face

oment the girl thought they would have come to blows. Then it passed an

uarter deck and fo'c'sle had vanished. They had become welded into one community, all equal, and the lady was no longer th

with the social. Nothing remained but the human

s, when they raised it again, it was all the sam

ighted something ahead. It was a rock, high and pointed like a black spi

e berth?" asked La Touche. "

aid Bompard. "I don't see breakers, and we

ing guillemots. As the boat drew near the guillemots gave tongue. The sound came against the wind fierce and compla

surface. The sight seemed to bring the hostile coast leagues nearer and the bagpipe crying o