kettle, and La Touche was opening the hermetically sealed
canister of tea with his knife; neither man was speaking and the meal
passed off almost in silence.

She felt that any moment the quarrel might break out again and her
instinct was to get away from them.

She had left the fisherman's knife and belt in her cave; she went to the
cave and strapped the belt around her waist. The boat hook was lying on
the sand; she picked it up and, carrying it, walked away down the beach
in the direction of the cache.

The boat hook was a weapon of sorts and it was better out of the men's
way; the knife was different. It had come to her that in this place it
was better to be armed and she determined always to wear it.

But no sounds of quarrelling followed her, only the quarrelling of the
gulls, and half a mile away, looking back, she saw that the men had
separated. La Touche was standing by the boat and Bompard was walking
towards the Lizard point. 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. Nothing speaking of man lay there but the boat that looked
like a toy cast there by a child. It held her eyes, focussed her
thoughts, and became the centre of a sudden longing, a desire soul
searching as the desire for water--the desire for civilization, for the
things and people that she knew.

Her companions had become horrible to her. To go on living with them
seemed appalling. The rocks, the sea, the gulls, even the rain, all
these fitted with her mind--they seemed in some way familiar, but with
the men she had nothing in common.

It is worse to be wrecked on a social state than on a desert shore. She
was wrecked on both.

She recognised surely that at the rate things were going she would soon,
so far from being above her companions, be below them on account of her
weakness. She recognised that superiority of mind would count little
after a while with these minds, incapable of distinguishing grades, or
values, beyond money value and the distinction of master from man, and
that sex so far from being a protection would be a danger.

Her brave mind allowed itself to be borne along for a while on these
currents of thought, then it reacted against them, repeating again