The Beach of Dreams: A Romance

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Then the terrible fixed eyes began to grow more human, then to close slightly. She was still far at sea, but no longer adrift; like a little boat taken in tow she was heading now back for the shore. She fell asleep holding his thumb.

The bits of wood she had chipped from the figure-head were lying in a little heap near the cave mouth and the axe lay beside them. He noted them as he sat motionless as a carved figure till the grip on his thumb relaxed, and the dry claw-like hand, now growing moist and human, gave up its hold.

Then, crawling out, stealthily and side-ways like a crab, he seized the axe and, rising up outside, axe in hand, stood looking in at the woman. He stood watching her, making sure that she was well asleep, then he turned towards the seal nursery swinging the axe. There he murdered a little girl sea elephant after a short, sharp chase over the rocks. Then, close to the caves and with his sailor’s knife, he stripped her of fur and blubber. He placed the blubber on one side, cut up the meat and retaining the heart and kidneys wrapped the head and the remainders in the pelt and dumped them in a crack in the rocks.

Having done this he went to the river and washed his hands free of the blood and grease.

In his bundle there was a box with half a dozen matches, they would have been gone long ago only that long ago his tobacco had given out. They were useful now.

He knelt down and undid the bundle. There was in it beside the match-box a shirt rolled up, two sailors’ knives, two tobacco boxes, a couple of huge biscuits, a piece of sail cloth and a pair of men’s boots, one might have fancied from the knives and tobacco boxes that he was the only survivor of a party of three cast on the coast and that he had kept these things as relics. That was the fact.

When he had secured the matches his next thought was of the firewood and the baling tin. There was a saucepan away at the back of the cave under the other things but he could not see it. He could see the tin but he dreaded going in to get it lest he should wake the woman and she should clutch his thumb again.

That was a bad experience and he told himself that if she had not relaxed her hold he would have been sitting there still tied hand and foot and not daring to move—strength in the clutch of weakness, to whom God has given a power greater that that of strength.

He crawled in and secured the tin without wakening her and as much firewood as he wanted. It was fairly dry and with the help of the blubber he soon had it burning between two big stones, then he put the tin on, half filled with water, and dropped in the seal meat cut fine. He was making soup for himself as well as for her. He had been without hot food for ages and the smell of the stuff as it began to cook made him sometimes forget her entirely.

Predatory gulls had found the pelt and the head in the rock crevice and their quarrelling filled the beach. He turned his head sometimes to look at them as he sat squatting like a gipsy before the little fire, tilting the tin by the handle and stirring the contents with his knife. He was a man of resource for, before filling the tin with fresh water, he had dipped it in the sea so as to get some salt into the mess.