besides, was fairly warm. She would learn
to do without shoes as well as without stockings. She would have to go
about without shoes or stockings. She thought of the men. Strangely
enough the thought of going about without shoes or stockings seemed less
repulsive to her than the thought of going about with her hair loose.

As she lay revolving this business in her mind the whale birds flitting
about in the darkness outside suddenly ceased their crying and through
the silence came a vague mysterious sound that deepened into a humming
like the drone of a gigantic top; the humming became a roar, the roar of
rain. Rain falling in solid sheets, coming across the land like a moving
Niagara, now taking the beach and now the sea. Never had she heard such
rain as this, falling in the black and utter darkness. The shelve of the
beach saved the cave from being flooded and the beetling of the cliff
kept it dry and within a couple of feet of the entrance but it could not
keep out the rain smell, the raw smell of Kerguelen carried from inland,
the smell of bog patches and new washed dolerite and bitter vegetation,
keen, like the smell of the Stone Age. Then after a bit the first great
onslaught slackened.

The girl raised herself on her elbow, then she rose and cast off the
oilskin coat that had served for a blanket. She undressed in the
darkness, made a bundle of her stockings and her Jaeger underclothes and
placed them beneath the sailcloth, then removing the comb from her hair
and letting it fall she came out into the blackness and stood in the
torrential rain.

It beat on her head and shoulders and breast, it cascaded down her
limbs, soothing as the hand of mesmerism, refreshing, delightful beyond
words, then she came back into the cave and, finding the cotton waste,
dried herself as well as she could, dried her hair and twisted it into
a knot, put on her blouse, coat and skirt and covered herself with the
oilskin.

She had solved the question of a bath and change of clothes, at least
for the moment. The discomfort of the rough tweed of the skirt against
her unprotected limbs, of the hard bed, of the sailcloth pillow with
its vague smell of canvas and jute, all these were nothing to that other
discomfort. These were physical, that was psychical.

She fell asleep and slept till long after dawn. When she came out the
rain had ceased and through air fresh as though from the hand of
Creation vast clouds were rolling away toward