“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 running out on the beach last evening?”
“I can snare rabbits all right,” said La Touche, “but where’s the wire to make snares with—see—we’re caught everywhere.”
“Wait,” said Bompard.