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"That is so," said Bompard, "I thought every moment we would be flooded out. It was no time for a man to be thinking of firewood." "Well, you will have no fire and nothing hot," said Cléo, "and those mussels will be wasted they won't keep, but there's no use in saying any more about it only you must learn to think of things. It's not pleasant, I know, to have to look ahead but one has to do it.
She had finished this operation and had got the mussels back in the tin when a shout caused her to turn. It was the men, they were coming along the beach from the break in the cliffs. Bompard leading, La Touche lagging behind. Bompard was carrying something under his arm, it was a Kerguelen cabbage. La Touche carried nothing.
Such was Gabrielle Bompard when, on July 26, exactly one year to a day before the murder of Gouffe, she met in Paris Michel Eyraud. These two were made for each other. If Gabrielle were unmoral, Eyraud was immoral. Forty-six at the time of Gouffe's murder, he was sufficiently practised in vice to appreciate and enjoy the flagrantly vicious propensities of the young Gabrielle.
"Let's go and see," said Cléo. She rose up and came down the beach followed by the others. The wind from the mountains died away but the sea torment remained and, though the tide was beginning to ebb, the spray of the waves almost reached the boat. It had been listed to one side by the Wooley but was undamaged and the forward locker was still open as it had been left by the careless Bompard.
The coward in La Touche refused to face it fully, refused to face the fact that with this swell and with all the chances of uncharted and unknown reefs and rocks the risk was appalling. He grew angry. "Don't be a coward over it," said he. That set Bompard off, and for a moment the girl thought they would have come to blows.
Bompard was munching a biscuit he had taken from one of the bread bags as he worked. She noticed the bag, its texture, and the words "Traversal Toulon" stamped 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. They were. They were food.
All the equipment, in fact, necessary for an expedition of a dozen men for six months. Not a drop of liquor. Perhaps that was why the girl was more overjoyed by the details of the find than the mariners. Bompard openly expressed his mind. "Not a bottle of wine or a drop of rum, swabs."
The louder cry of a gull outside seemed hailing Bompard, the rustle of a rabbit on the sands seemed the coming of La Touche, the sound of the sea spoke of them, the boat seemed only waiting for them to launch it. They, whom a million years would not bring back.
Perhaps the doctor was inclined to sympathise rather too readily with his patient, if we are to accept the report of those distinguished medical gentlemen who, at a later date, examined carefully into the mental and physical characteristics of Gabrielle Bompard.
"Oh, Bompard will come back all right," said he, "the grub's here and that will bring him. Bompard will come back all right." "No," said she, "he will never come back and you know it." She turned away from him. Dusk was now falling and as she entered her cave the wind from the sea suddenly fell dead.
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