range passion that women have for things of texture.

The hair of Cleo de Bromsart had been waited upon like a divinity by
many a priestess in the form of a maid. It had been dressed and
shampooed and treated by artists and adepts, the hours of brushing alone
if put together would have made a terrific total. The result was
perfection, and even now, after all she had gone through, it shewed
scarcely disarrangement, lustrous and beautiful, dressed with artful
simplicity in the Greek style and outlining the perfect curves of her
head.

The wind was blowing now in gusto from the sea, but she scarcely noticed
it as she walked, facing the problem that shipwreck had put before her,
a problem the first of a long queue ranging from soap to a change of
garments.

She was fighting it and at the same time battling with the strengthening
wind when suddenly something sprang on her with the yell of a tiger and
flung her on the sand, pinning her there.

CHAPTER IX

THE WOOLEY

It was the wind. The Wooley, which is the fist of Kerguelen suddenly
clenched and hitting out from the shoulder of the great islands now
suddenly stormed about with foam and veiled in spray.

Half stunned, she twisted round, still lying but fronting it now with
her arm protecting her face. The beach had loudened up in thunder from
end to end but the yelling Wooley as it met the cliffs and howled inland
almost drowned the thunder of the waves. Then it died down as suddenly
as it had come, and the boom of the surf rose high, as the girl,
gathering herself together, got up and struggled on.

She was no longer thinking of her hair. It was the first lesson of the
school of Kerguelen. "Here you shall think of nothing but the moment, of
the ground beneath your feet, of the bite you put in your mouth, of the
rock that stands before you."

When she reached the cave with her petticoats thrusting about her she
was met by the two men and as she came up to them La Touche was cursing
the wind. The Wooley had all but blown him down too. He had got up
sooner than Bompard and had received the full face of it "in the pit of
the stomach." He seemed to look on it as a personal matter affecting him
alone.

Even as he spoke a sudden calm fell, lasted for a moment, and was
followed by a howl from inland.

At a stroke the wind had changed right round and was blowing now from
the mountains. Here in the shelter of the cliffs they scarcely felt it
but the shift had r