PART VI
CHAPTER XXXV
MARSEILLES
On board the Carcassonne the girl had broken down as though all the exhaustion she had defied had waited for that moment to fall upon her.
But the energy that had held her above defeat and had given her hope when things seemed hopeless was there, undestroyed, and when the turning point came she rallied swiftly. She came on deck one morning where Bathurst lay a point invisible beyond the blue sea to starboard and sitting in a deck chair made friends with the other passengers.
It seemed to her almost impossible that the same world should hold Kerguelen and at the same time this paradise of azure blue sky and tepid wind.
Raft had told her story before reaching Cape Town and the loss of the Gaston de Paris was now old news in Europe, and the fact that of all the Gaston’s crowd only the beautiful Cléo de Bromsart had been saved.
Raft had joined the crew of the Carcassonne, sleeping in the foc’s’le, where there were several English speaking sailors, and as much out of his element as a man used only to masts and spars can be on a steamboat. However, he swabbed decks and did odd jobs without a grumble and he was swabbing the deck on the morning she came up; he dropped the business for a moment to take the two hands she held out to him.