CHAPTER XXX
THE BAY
It took them till dusk to reach the foot of the western rise of ground; here they slept under a rock, continuing their way next morning, climbing till they reached the summit of the rise and keeping their course along the edge of a cliff that fell a sheer three hundred feet to the shore below.
Sometimes Raft peeped over the cliff edge and once the girl drew close and looked, too, dizzy with the height, made more dreadful by the gulls flying far below.
At noon, far ahead of them, they saw something that made them pause; a little mound. As they drew closer they knew. It was another cache, a cache made of heaped earth and loose stones with about a foot of sign post protruding from it. The post had been broken off in some storm and blown away.
“There’ll be stuff under there,” said Raft, “and if we have to go back it’ll come in handy. It’s a pointer to the bay anyhow; there must be some landin’ place near here, we’ve only got to keep on.”
They sat down and rested and had some food, eating as much as they wanted now that they had a store to depend on. They had drunk twice that morning from pot holes still half-filled with the rain of a few days ago and they had no need of water—it is the one thing a man never needs in Kerguelen. They were in good spirits; the haunting fear that their provisions might not be enough to last them for the return journey was gone; also, if the bay were near, they could remain now some time, even take up their quarters here to wait on the chance of a ship.
The idea came to them to make a burrow into the cache, now, working with the harpoon and their hands, and for the purpose of verifying the contents; but they put it away, the desire to get on drove them like a whip and they went on, halting towards dusk and sleeping in a hollow that gave them shelter from the wind that was blowing from the south.