LITMIR.BIZ

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the first days Claire had inclined to feel that Norwood was the more tolerable companion, and the arrangement of labour caused them to be much together, while Jephson worked at the house, but neither was in any way congenial to her.

      Then there was the day when the first of the dead sheep was washed into the bay. There had been many sheep on the uplands, but it was several days before the first of them came ashore; after that some trick of the tide brought several others, but it was over the first one that the quarrel had arisen.

      Claire was a woman unused to shirk an unpleasant task, if its need were clear, but her experiences had not been those of a butcher. Swollen and sodden, the carcass was repulsive to look at.

      “That there sheep will need skinnin’, Mrs. Arlington,” Jephson had remarked. He had addressed her up to that time with that degree of polite formality.

      “Not by me, Mr. Jephson,” she had replied pleasantly enough, but with an intention of finality.

      “Nor I,” said Norwood, with a glance of disgust at the still floating carcass, “and what the hell do we want with the skin of a rotten sheep?”

      Norwood spoke with irritation, born of an earlier difference. Neither of the two men had yet accepted the leadership of the other, nor found the terms of a smooth-working partnership. They were like two armies which are manoeuvring for position before the battle joins, and perhaps it was from that reason, or because Jephson was not as clear in his own mind as to the degree of rottenness or inutility of the object of his cupidity as he would have liked to be, that Norwood’s question was left unanswered.

      He looked at Claire with a dangerous humour in his deep-set eyes, and spoke with a deliberate slowness.

      “Mrs. Arlington, you’ll skin that sheep, an’ no ‘umbug! Yes, my wench, you will. We all does our part here.”

      He walked away for a few yards, and looked back. She had not moved, and was regarding him with an amused contempt which hid some inward uncertainty. “Or I’ll larn you what you don’t want, nor I, neither.” With which cryptic remark he had gone off and left them.

      She had remained silent and thoughtful for some time, while she realised several things more clearly than she had done previously. One was that there is no more ‘romance’ in a community of three people than of thirty, or of thirty millions—probably much less, because the choice of intimacy or of companionship is so much more limited.

      Norwood said nothing. Bare-legged, he was hauling some broken timber clear of the receding water, and did not ask her assistance.

      The dead sheep had grounded and lay half out of the water.

      She walked over to it and surveyed it with distaste.

      “Is it really worth doing, Mr. Norwood?” She asked in a judicial tone, intended to convey that she would decide the question on its merits without reference to Jephson’s rudeness.

      Norwood, who probably knew no more than herself as to the value of such a hide, or of the method of salving it, had looked across with disgust and hesitation. “Beastly job,” he had replied vaguely, and then, after a moment’s pause, he had added impulsively: “Call me George, and I’ll help you,” and it was just that which had decided her to undertake the loathsome task, and to do it unaided.

      It reminded her that familiarity from her companions might be worse than rudeness.

      She had made a hard and filthy labour harder than it need have been through her ignorance, and she had worked with a growing conviction that if the product of her occupation were really of any value, neither she nor either of the men had the necessary knowledge to utilise it, but it was done at last in a ragged way.

      The next day had brought a worse horror, for it was a human body that the tide gave them after a week of wandering at the waves’ mercy. Of her own instinct she would have closed her eyes and waded out and pushed the dreadful thing at a pole’s end back through the channel by which it had entered, but here another aspect of Jephson’s character was revealed. He had, as she had already recognised, no religion whatever beyond a few of the crudest superstitions only half believed, but he held to the ritual of burial with the foolishness of the class from which he came. It is bare justice to say that he did his part on this occasion, not resting till a grave had been opened in the chalky soil and the ghastly remnant of what had once been human deposited, with some reading of prayers above it.

      It had seemed to Claire that he derived satisfaction, if not actual enjoyment, from this procedure, but, however that might be, the incident renewed the consciousness, through that single evidence, of the appalling catastrophe from which they had emerged with lives uninjured. For a few hours it had subdued the ego in each of them.

      It was some days after that—but they went uncounted—that Norwood dragged ashore a wooden chest containing little of value, but in which he found a bottle which he slipped stealthily into his pocket, thinking that it was unobserved by Claire, who was working beside him. She was slightly startled, because there had been an understanding that nothing salved should be retained by any one of them, except by consent, but she said nothing.

      Shortly afterwards they returned to the house together, and the occurrence left her mind. Jephson’s news might have banished a more important incident. The fresh water had failed them. The house had been supplied from a well, and surprisingly enough, had they considered it, the supply had continued after the subsidence of the land which gave it, but that afternoon Jephson had drawn some to fill a cask which they kept for the cows to drink when they came for milking, and noticed that the well was much higher than usual, and then that the cows, which usually drank it eagerly, breathed over it and turned away. He had tasted it and found it salt.

      At the first hearing she had scarcely realised the magnitude of the disaster. They did not drink water. Milk was too abundant. One of the cows had calved, and they left her alone, but the other two were in full milk. She had milked them thoroughly morning and evening, knowing that they would go dry if she failed to do so. They drank what they could, and they threw the rest away. What else could they do? Had she been expert in the making of cheese or butter there was no time. Everything was subordinated, and rightly so, to the saving of that which the sea brought them. They did no cooking. They had no fires in the house. Once or twice when Jephson had wanted one for some process of the building on which he laboured, he had lit a fire of rubbish outside, and then they had boiled some vegetables from the garden. Mostly they lived on foods which the sea had given. Among them were some tinned fish and a crate of bananas. There were other things put aside, including a side of bacon, and there were potatoes in the garden waiting the time to dig them. They had no fear of starvation. There were sheep, too, when they were needed. But they had no flour.

      They slept in separate rooms, which they had made more or less their own, and which they kept as they would, though each of them now had its share of salvage, and would have had much more but that the labour of carrying to the house was much greater than that of saving from the sea.

      Night and morning they met to eat in the common kitchen, and talked of the day’s doings. Beyond that they ate when and what they would, but there was no time for life’s amenities.

      Jephson had a sense of order, though little of personal cleanliness, and he kept the kitchen roughly clear and tidy.

      So they lived.

      The sea had brought them quantities of clothing, mostly damaged, and much of it otherwise useless.

      There was a large case of ladies’ gloves—many gross. Claire could not have worn them had she wished to do so; they were all a size too small.

      A suit of men’s overalls, of which the sea had also delivered a consignment, was the most useful dress she had for the work she was doing; and when they were not working they slept.

      Boots were the greatest need. Those which the men had were wearing out, and there was no means of replacement. Claire had landed without any. She had tried going barefooted. It had not been any real hardship on soft turf, or on the mud which the tide left, till she had trodden on some broken glass and must go bandaged and lamely. The next day she found an

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