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He succeeded in seeing four of them, but in his article which appeared in the Matin newspaper said that he had seen twenty-one. Nine of them, he stated, had declared themselves in favour of Gabrielle Bompard, but in some of these he had discerned a certain "eroticism of the pupil of the eye" to which he attributed their leniency.
She heard Bompard say: "There, you have sent her off, talking like that," and what La Touche replied she could not hear, but she guessed it was something not complimentary to Bompard or herself. The boat was half full of rain-water.
Though Bompard and La Touche had dropped the "mademoiselle" in addressing her, they treated her since landing with a certain respect which would have been wanting had she been a woman of their own class. The class difference held and was a greater protection to her than anything else.
Bompard, on his knees, and with a maconochie tin in his left hand, raised his head and looked. "Ay, that's Kerguelen," said Bompard. "And look," said the girl, pointing towards Kerguelen. "Is not that the sail of a boat, away ever so far or is it a gull? Now it's gone. Look, there it is again." Bompard looked.
"Well, it's beef," said La Touche who had managed to open the Libby tin, "it might be worse." He dug out a piece with his knife and presented it to the girl with a biscuit, then he helped Bompard and himself, then he scrambled forward, leaving his beef and biscuit on the thwart, and reappeared with a pannikin of water; it was handed to the lady first. The food seemed to loose their tongues.
La Touche took the roll of wire and held it in his hands for a moment. "This is all very well," said he, "but where is your wire cutters?" They had nothing to cut the wire with, and he seemed to look on the fact as a triumph of his own cleverness over Cléo's, till Bompard intervened and shewed how, by knotting the wire and pulling hard, a break might be made.
Bompard was a Moco, La Touche a Ponantaise. They talked and talked, repeating themselves, cursing the "hooker," the Bridge and the steersman. Once La Touche, grown hysterical, seemed choking against tears. Then after a while, conversation died out. They had nothing more to talk about. The boat rode easy.
The door opened and I stood in the presence of the Brigadier Bompard. "The American gentleman," announced Pierre, relieving me of my gun. The brigadier bowed, looked me over sharply, and bade me enter. "At your service, monsieur," he said coldly, waving his big freckled hand toward a chair drawn up to a fat little stove blushing under a forced draft.
She sat down to rest for a moment and she watched the figure of Bompard. It grew smaller and smaller till it reached the point, then it vanished over the rocks. She saw La Touche walk away towards the caves; he disappeared, and the beach, now destitute of life, lay sung to by the sea and flown over by the gulls.
Near the safety of the Lizard rocks her eyes, closely scanning the ground before her, caught sight of something. It was a half-burned match. No one else but Bompard could have dropped that match. He had started without his tinder-box, had evidently found that match in his pocket, lit his pipe and walked on.
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