you ever seen a man killed?"

He laughed as though over some pleasant reminiscence. "Dozens." Then he
began to recall chaps he had seen killed, falling from aloft and
otherwise. He had seen one hit the sea such a smack it split him open,
and he had seen a chap under water being pulled to pieces by sharks just
as terriers pull an old shoe.

Then he wandered off to a bar scene where a dago--it was at
Nagasaki--had been drinking rice rum and knifed a man, a regular prosy
old sailor's yarn, with "I says to him," and "he says to me" at every
turn.

Then he found that she was leaning more heavily against him and was
asleep. He put his pipe beside him and slipped an arm round her. Then,
as though sleep were infectious, down he sank still holding her and
there they lay. He snoring gently and she with her head pillowed on his
chest.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE SUMMIT

"I will break thee." Across Kerguelen those words are written to be read
by the soul of man. The rock, the rain, the wind and the sea, these, as
instruments, would surely be sufficient for the carrying out of the
threat; but the soul of man is strong, hence the spirit of Kerguelen has
called to its assistance Fog.

Since landing on the great beach the girl had seen the islands
fog-wreathed several times but the beach itself had only once been
attacked.

When she awoke on the rock plateau the first word of Raft to her was
"fog."

They had slept as the dead sleep for nine hours and Raft had awoken with
the girl's head still on his chest and feeling as though he were packed
in damp cotton wool. It was after sun up and the fog was so dense that
the edge of the plateau was only just visible. Through the fog came the
breaking of the waves; the tide was coming in again.

Raft had lit his pipe and the girl, stiff from lying, rose up and
stamped about to warm herself. Neither of them spoke a word in the way
of grumbling.

The plateau was about twenty yards in length and by drawing off five
yards or so one could have a dressing-room screened with a fog veil, so
the fog was not an unmixed evil.

Then they breakfasted, listening to the slashing of the water just below
and counting the time till the out-going sea would let them loose.

"It's a good job I went to the point last night," said Raft, "else we
wouldn't be able to start in this smother, not knowing what was beyond
there."

"Will we be able to start in this?" she asked.

"Lord, yes," replied he, "