put them on. She would have much preferred not to have
worn them, they irritated her, but they were part of her insignia and
she put them on.

As she was putting the tobacco box back in her pocket something looked
in at her. It was a rabbit, a grey fat rabbit that had lopped right to
the cave mouth; it sat up for a moment on its hind legs, looked in, and
then lopped off without any hurry, as though a girl seated in a cave
were an accustomed object and a human being something not to be afraid
of.

This fearlessness of the rabbit would have started her on a long and
dismal train of thought had she not checked herself in time and like the
man in the haunted house who kept the fear of ghosts away by thinking of
plum puddings, she started to work, re-folding the sail that had served
her for a pillow the night before; then she took the oilskin coat out
and shook it, and folding it, placed it by the left wall of the cave
with the sou'wester on top of it. She was tidying her house.

Then she went into the men's cave and did a bit of tidying there,
stacking the tins more neatly and putting the odds and ends together.
The sight of the cotton waste gave her an idea and going down to the
boat she emptied the mussels from the baling tin on to the sand, filled
the tin with sea water and bathed her face and hands, drying them on
the cotton. 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.

CHAPTER XI

THE CACHE

When she lay down that night on the hard sand, with the sailcloth
beneath her head, she could not sleep. The wretchedness of having to lie
down fully dressed, of being unable to change her clothes, fell on her
like a blight.

She lay fighting the problem. It was impossible to go on like this. One
might live with little food, but to live always without undressing and
changing one's things was impossible. This problem was insoluble, or
seemed so. Then she found a half solution. She would discard her
stockings and under garments, make a bundle of them and put them under
the sailcloth, she would not wear them again, she would suffer from
cold, no matter, anything was better than that feeling of being fully
dressed always. The weather,