If the sea had risen above the reef destroying the village and sweeping the population of Karolin to ruin whilst leaving her untouched, Le Moan would have stood as she stood now, unmoved before the inevitable and the accomplished.
Her world lay around her in ruins and the destroyers lay before her asleep.
She had feared death and dreaded separation, but she had never dreamed of this—for Taori, in her mind, had always stood alone as the sun stands alone in the sky.
A spear stood against the tree bole and the pitiless hand that had killed Carlin could have seized it and plunged it into the heart of Katafa, but if the sea had destroyed her world as this girl had destroyed it, would she have cast a spear at the sea? The thing was done, accomplished, of old time. Her woman’s instinct told her that.
Done and accomplished, without any knowledge of her, in a world from which she had been excluded by fate.
Moving from the doorway she passed them, almost touching their feet. To right and left of her lay the tumbling sea and the lit lagoon, before her the great white road of the beaches and the reef. She followed the leading of this road with little more volition than the wind-blown leaf or the drifting weed; with only one desire, to be alone.
It led to the great trees where the canoe-builders had been at work. Here across the coral lay the trunks felled by Aioma, filling the air with the fragrance of new-cut wood. One already had been partly shaped and hollowed, and resting on it for a moment, Le Moan followed its curves with her eyes, felt the ax marks with her hand, took in every detail of the work, saw it as, with outrigger affixed and sail spread to the wind, it would take the sea, sometime—sometime—sometime.
The ceaseless breakers casting their spindrift beneath the moon lulled her mind for a moment till trees, canoe, reef and sea all faded and dissolved in a world of sound, a voice-world through which came the chanting of stricken coral and, at last, pictures of the wind-blown southern beach.
The southern beach, sunlit and gull-flown, a beached canoe, a form—Taori.
It was now and now only that the pain came, piercing soul and rending body, crushing her and breaking her till she fell on the coral, her face buried in her arms, as though cast there by the sea whose eternal thunder filled the night.
The night wind moved her hair. It was blowing from the village and as it came it brought with it a vague whisper from the bushes and trees and now and again a faint perfume of cassi. Perfume, like music, is a voice speaking a language we have forgotten, telling tales we half understand, soothing us now with dreams, raising us now to action.
The cassi flowers were speaking to Le Moan. After a long, long while she moved, raised her head and, leaning on her elbow, seemed to listen.
Close to her was a pond in the coral—a rock pool filled with fresh water such as existed on the southern beach and a fellow of which lay in the village close to the house of Uta Matu.
Dragging herself towards it she leaned on her arms and looked deep down into the water just as she had been looking into the pool that day when raising her eyes she found herself first face to face with Taori.
The cassi flowers were speaking to Le Moan, their perfume followed her mind as it sank like a diver into the pool’s moonlit, crystal heart. Their voices said to her:
“Taori is not dead. Whilst he lives do not despair, for who can take his image from you and what woman’s love can equal yours? Peace, Le Moan. Watch and wait.”
Presently she arose, returning by the way she came. She drew towards the house of Uta Matu and passed the figures on the mat without glancing at them. Then in the house she lay down with her face to the wall. When the dawn aroused Katafa, Le Moan had not moved; one might have fancied her asleep.
Rantan, when they cast him in the fishing canoe, could see nothing but the roughly shaped sides, bright here and there where the scale of a palu had stuck and dried, the after outrigger pole, the blue sky above the gunnel and the heads of the crowd by the waterside.
By raising himself a little he might have glimpsed the two dead children tied to the outrigger gratings, but he could not raise himself, nor had he any desire to do so.
He knew the islands, he had heard what passed between Aioma and the women, and as they carried him from the boat to the canoe, he had seen the dead children tied on the gratings. What his fate was to be at the hands of Ona and Nanu he could not tell, nor did he try to imagine it.
All being ready, the stem of the canoe left the beach, the two women scrambling on board as it was waterborne. Nanu sat aft and Ona forward, trampling on Rantan’s body with her naked feet as she got there. The paddles splashed and the spray came inboard striking Rantan on the face, but he did not mind; neither did he mind the heat of the steadily rising sun, nor the heel of Ona as she dropped her paddle for a moment and raised the sail.
Sometimes he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of Nanu, who was steering, her eyes fixed on the sail; sometimes on the beach ahead, never or scarcely ever on Rantan.
Sometimes he could hear Ona’s voice. She was just behind his head holding on to the mast and trimming the canoe by moving now to the left or right—her voice came calling out some directions to the other and then sharp as the voice of Ona came the cry of a seagull that flew with them for a moment, inspecting the dead children on the gratings till the flashing paddle and the shouts of Nanu drove it away.
And now as the sun grew hotter, a vague odour of corruption filled the air, passed away with the back draught from the sail yet returned again, whilst the murmur of the northern beach that had died down behind them became merged in the wash of the waves on the southern coral.
Then as the place of their revenge drew close to them and they could see the deserted shacks, the long line of empty beach and the coconut trees in their separate groups, Nanu seemed to awake to the presence of Rantan. She glanced at him and laughed, and steering all the time, with side flashes of the paddle pointed him out to Ona whose laughter came from behind him, shrill, sharp and done with in a moment.
Truly Rantan wished that he had never embarked on this voyage, never seen Peterson, never left him for dead away there on Levua; bitterly did he repent his temerity in coming into Karolin lagoon and his stupidity in trying to shoot it up.
Sometimes, long ago, he had amused himself by imagining what might be the worst fate of a man at sea, shipwreck, slow starvation, death from thirst, from sharks, from fire. He had never imagined anything like his present position, never imagined himself in the hands of two women of the Islands, whose children he had been instrumental in murdering, two women who were taking him off to a desolate beach to do with him as they pleased. He could tell the approach of the beach by the face of Nanu and the outcries of Ona. Sometimes Ona would give his body a kick to emphasize what she was saying, which was Greek to Rantan. So sharp was her voice, so run together the words, that her speech was like a sword inscribed with unintelligible threats.
Now Nanu was half standing up, Ona was hauling the sail, the paddles were flashing, the sands close. They brought the stem of the canoe on to the shelving sand, and, on the bump and shudder, dropping their paddles, they jumped clear, seized gunnel and outrigger and beached her high and dry.
Then seizing their victim by the feet and the shoulders, they lifted him from the canoe and threw him on to the sand. He fell on his face, they turned him on his back and then left him, running about here and there and making preparations for their work.
The tide was running out and the wind, that had slacked to due west, bent the coco palms and brought up from all along the beach the silky whisper of the sands, the rumour of twenty miles of sea beating on the southern coral and the smell of sun-smitten seaweeds and emptying rock pools.
Rantan, who had closed his eyes, opened them, and turning his head slightly, watched the women; Nanu who was collecting bits of stick and wood to light a fire and Ona who was collecting oyster shells. There were many oyster shells lying about on the beach and Ona, as she went, picked and chose, taking only the flat shells and testing their edges with her thumb.
Rantan knew, and a shudder went through him as he watched her carrying them and placing them in a little heap by the place where Nanu was building her fire.
A big brown bird with curved beak and bright eyes sweeping in the air above them would curve and drift on the wind and return, making a swoop towards the beached canoe and the objects on the outrigger gratings, and the women, busy at their work, would shout at the bird and sometimes threaten it with a paddle which Ona ran and fetched from the canoe. Not till vengeance had been assured would the dead children be cast to the sharks. The shark was the grave and burial-ground of Karolin.
When everything was ready they turned from the fire and came running across the sand to their victim.
Rantan, lying on his back with eyes closed and mouth open, had ceased to breathe.
Never looked man more dead than Rantan, and Ona, dropping on her knees beside him with a cry, turned him on one side, turned him back, cried out to Nanu who dashed off to the fire, seized a piece of burning stick, rushed back with it and pressed the red hot point of it against his foot. Rantan did not move.
Then furious, filling the air with their cries, with only one idea, to rub him and pound him and to bring back the precious life that had escaped or was escaping them, they began to strip him of his bonds, tearing off the coconut sennit strips, the sheet, unrolling him like a mummy from its bandages, till he lay naked beneath the sun—a corpse that suddenly sprang to life with a yell, bounded to its feet, seized the paddle and flung itself on Nanu, felling her with a smashing blow on the neck, turned and pursuing Ona chased her as she ran this way and that like a frightened duck.
Few men had ever seen Rantan. The silent, quiet, sunburnt man of ordinary times was not Rantan. This was Rantan, this mad figure yelling hatred, radiating revenge, mad to kill.
Rantan robbed of his pearl lagoon, of his ship, of his prospect of wealth, ease, wine and women—by kanakas; Rantan whom kanakas had bound with a sheet and dumped into a canoe; Rantan whom two kanaka women—women!—women, mind you—had trodden on, and whom they had been preparing to scrape to death slowly inch by inch with oyster shells, and burn bit by bit with hot sticks.
This was the real Rantan raised to his nth power by injuries, insults, and the escape from a terrible death.
Ona dashed for the canoe, maybe with some blind idea to get hold of the other paddle to defend herself with, but he had the speed of her and headed her off; she made for the rough coral of the outer beach but he headed her off; time and again he could have closed with her and killed her, but the sight of her frizzy head, her face, her figure, and the fact that she was a woman, filled him with a counter rage that spared her for the moment. He could have chased her for ever, killing her a thousand times in his mind, had his strength been equal to his hatred; but he could not chase her for ever, and, suddenly, with a smashing blow he brought her to ground, beat the life out of her and stood gasping, satiated and satisfied.
Only for a moment. The sight of Nanu lying where he had felled her brought him running. She had fallen near the heap of oyster shells, the fire that she had built was still burning, the stick which she had pressed against his foot was close to her. She had recovered consciousness and as she lay, her eyes wide open, she saw him stand above her, the paddle uplifted, and that was the last thing she saw in this world.
He came down to the water’s edge and sat, squatting, the paddle beside him and his eyes fixed away over the water to where the schooner was visible, a toy ship no larger than the model of the Rarotonga, swinging to the outgoing tide.
Beyond the schooner the trees that hid the village were just visible.
He was free, free for the moment, but still in the trap of the lagoon.
Free, but stripped of everything; absolutely naked, without even shoes.
He was thinking in pictures; pictures now vague, now clear ran through his mind, the shooting up of the lagoon, the figure of Dick swimming off towards him and Carlin as they were firing from the boat, the fight in the cabin, the killing of Carlin—and again Dick.
Dick as he had come and stood looking at him (Rantan) as he lay bound and helpless. His hatred of the kanakas and the whole business seemed focussed in Dick, for in that bright figure and noble face lay expressed the antithesis of himself, something that he could not despise as he despised Sru, the Karolin people, even Carlin.
He loathed this creature whom he had only seen twice and to whom he had never spoken—loathed him as hell loathes heaven.
Then Dick dropped from his mind.
He was still in the trap of the lagoon. He turned his head to where behind him on the sands lay the two dead women, then he turned his eyes to the beached canoe where lay the two dead children strapped to the gratings. The waves spoke and the wind on the sands, and the bo’sun bird returning with a mate swept by, casting its shadow close to him.
Rantan shouted and picking up the paddle threatened the bird just as the women had done, then he sprang to his feet.
He must get out, get out with the canoe, clear off before the kanakas had any chance of coming across. They had no canoes, but they had the ship’s boats and if they came and caught him, it would be death; he could get drinking nuts from the trees, but first he must untie those cursed children from the gratings. He turned towards the canoe and as he turned something caught his eye away across the water.
The merry west wind had blown out a bunt of the schooner’s hastily stowed canvas in a white flicker against the blue. Were they getting sail on the schooner?
He turned and ran towards the trees. He could climb like a monkey, and heedless of everything but drinking nuts and pandanus drupes, he set to work, collecting them. A mat lay doubled up near one of the deserted shacks; he used it as a basket and between the trees and the canoe he ran and ran, sweating, with scarcely a glance across the water—his only idea the thirst and hunger of the sea which he had to face, the terror of torture and death that lay behind him. There was a huge fig tree, the only one on Karolin, and a tree bearing an unknown fruit in form and colour like a lemon. He raided them, tearing branches down and stripping the fruit off. Before his last journey to the canoe he flung himself down by the little well, the same into which Le Moan had been gazing when she first saw Taori, and drank and drank—raising his head only to drink again.
Reaching the canoe for the last time he threw the fruit in and took a glance across the water to the schooner. The wind had taken advantage of the clumsy and careless work of the crew and the size of the bunt had increased. In his right senses he would have known the truth, but terror had him by the shoulder and seizing the gunnel he began to drive the canoe into the water. The falling tide had left her almost dry, the outrigger interfered with his efforts, getting half buried in the sand. He could not push her out and at the same time keep her level with the outrigger lifting. He had to run from side to side pushing and striving, till at last the idea came to him to spread the mat under the outrigger. That made things easier. He had her now nearly waterborne; throwing in the paddle he prepared to send her out with a last great push, and, running through the shallow water, scramble on board.
Such was the state of his mind he had not recognized that the bodies of the two babies tied to the gratings were a main cause in the tilting of the canoe to port and his difficulty in keeping her on a level keel; nor did he now, but he recognized that he could not put to sea with those terrible bodies tied to him.
He set to work to untie them, but Nanu and Ona, as though previsioning this business, had done their work truly and well—the spray and the sun had shrunk the coconut sennit bindings and the knots were hard as bits of oak. He had no knife, and his hands were shaking and his fingers without power.
A gull swooped down as if to help him and he struck at it with his fist; the sweat poured from him and his knees were beginning to knock together.
The tide was still falling, threatening to leave the canoe dry again; he recognized that and, leaving the bodies untied, raced round to the starboard side, seized the gunnel and pushed her out. On board he paddled kneeling, and using the paddle now on one side, now on the other; making straight out, the lose sail flapping above him, his knees wet with crushed pandanus drupes, gulls following him swooping down and clanging off on the wind.
Then, far enough out, he gave the sail to the breeze that was blowing steady for the break. He was free, nobody could stop him now. Wind and tide were with him, so were the lagoon sharks, who guessed what was tied to the gratings and the gulls who saw.
A royal escort of gulls snowed the air above the flashing paddle and the bellying sail as the canoe, driving past the piers of the opening took the sea and the outer swell, steering dead before the wind for the east.
Little by little the gulls fell astern, gave up the chase, swept back towards Karolin, leaving the man and the dead children and the canoe to the blue sea and the wind that swept it.
Rantan steered. He was used to the handling of a canoe and he knew that, alone as he was, he could do nothing but just keep the little craft before the wind. Where the wind blew he must go and with him his cargo, the fruit at his feet and the forms tied to the grating.
Once with a dangerous and desperate effort he tried to untie them, but his weight thrown to port nearly capsized him. Then, giving the matter up and steeling his heart, he steered before a wind that had now shifted, blowing from the north.
At sunset it was blowing dead from the north and all night long it blew till the dawn rose and there before Rantan, breaking the skyline, palm tops showed and the foam of a tiny atoll singing to the sunrise.
The break was towards the north and the wind brought him through it into the little lagoon, not a mile broad, and on to the beach.
Springing on to the sand and looking wildly around him he saw nothing—only the trees, not a sign of life, only the trees in their beauty, the lagoon in its loveliness, the sky in its purity. Blue and green and the white of coral sand, all in the fresh light of the forenoon Paradise.
Having looked around him, listened and swept the sea with a last glance, he turned to the trees, cast himself in their shadow and leaving the canoe to drift away or stick, fell into a sleep profound as the sleep of the just.
He was saved—for the moment. Freed from Karolin, he had not done with Karolin yet. He had sailed for twenty hours before a five-knot breeze. Karolin was just that distance away below the horizon to the nor’-nor’-west.a
The dawn that showed Rantan the tiny atoll awakened Aioma who had fallen asleep thinking of the schooner.
Dick had promised that to-day they would board her and the canoe-builder in him craved to get to work, and the boy—the boy wanted to sail her, to feel the wind settling in the great spaces of her canvas, to feel her heeling to it like a tilted world, to feel her answering the helm; the canoe-builder wanted to explore her above and below, examine the fastenings of her timbers; her masts and rigging.
Aioma was very old. He might have been a hundred. No man could tell, for Karolin the clockless kept no account of years. He was too old for fighting, having lost the quickness without which a spear- or club-man is of no account as a fighter; but he was not too old for fun.
Whip-ray fishing was fun to Aioma—a sport that, next to conger killing, is the nearest approach to fighting with devils; so also was shaping heavy logs to the form of his dream, for Aioma dreamt his canoes before he shaped them, the breaking of Rantan’s joints and the staking him on the reef for sharks to devour would also have been fun had not the women claimed the victim to torture him as they pleased.
Aioma, in fact, was as young as he ever had been and as potent in all fields except those of war and love. He came to the water’s edge and stood looking at the schooner. He had dreamt that, walking on the sands of the beach with Taori they had looked for the schooner and found her gone. But she was there right enough, her spars showing against the blaze in the east.
The gulls knew that she was deserted, they flew above her in the golden morning and lighted on her rails and spars whilst the ripple of the tide past her anchor chain showed the living brilliancy of light on moving water.
The canoes and dinghy being destroyed they would have to get off to her in the boat.
For a moment the old man stood looking at the bones of the broken canoes and the planks of the poor old dinghy; the fishing fleet of Karolin had gone just as the fighting fleet had gone, yet the gods had made compensation, for there lay the schooner, a thing more potent than all the fleets of Karolin combined, and there lay her boat, a fine four-oared double-ender, carvel built, white painted, a joy to the eye.
Yesterday at odd times he had examined her outside and in; this morning as his eyes swept over her again, new thoughts came to him and a new vision.
Canoes, what were they beside these things, and why build canoes any more, why hollow and shape those vast tree-trunks over which they had been labouring for long weeks when here to their hands lay something better than any fleet of canoes? If Taori wished to attack those men on the northern island, why not attack with the schooner, a whole fleet in one piece, so to speak?
As he stood pondering over this new idea, Dick, who had awakened early, came towards him from the trees accompanied by Katafa.
“Taori,” said the canoe-builder, “we will go to her (the schooner) you and I; she is ours and I want no other hand to touch her or foot to rest on her till we alone have been with her for a space. Help me.” He laid his hand in the gunnels of the boat as he spoke and Dick, as eager as the other, calling to Katafa to help them, went to the opposite side; between them they got her afloat and tumbled in.
Aioma had learned to handle an oar in the dinghy; the heavy ash sweep was nothing to him and as the boat made across the glitter of the lagoon, Katafa, her feet washed by the little waves on the sand, stood watching them.
Dick had not asked her to accompany him. It was as though the schooner had come between them as a rival—a thing, for the moment, more desirable than her.
She was feeling now what she had felt before only more vaguely. She had always distrusted the little ships, those models born of the pocket knife and ingenuity of Kearney, those hints of an outside world, a vague outside world that might some day break into their environment and separate her from Dick.
This distrust had been built up from the cannon shot of the Portsey that had smashed her canoe, from the schooner that had come into Palm Tree lagoon with its cargo of Melanesians and it joined with a vague antagonism born of jealousy.
When Dick fell into contemplation of the ship models and especially that of the schooner, he seemed to forget her more completely than even when he was fishing.
Fishing, his mind would be away from her no doubt, but it would still be close; brooding over the little ships and especially the schooner, his mind would be far away. She could tell it by the look in his eyes, by his expression, by his attitude.
And now that this apotheosis of the model schooner was handed to him by the fates as a plaything, the distrust and antagonism in the mind of the girl became acute.
It was almost as though another woman had put a spell upon him alienating him from her. As a matter of fact this was the case, for the schooner was the gift of Le Moan.
As the boat came alongside the Kermadec, the gulls left her, drifting off on the wind. Swinging with the tide, her stem was towards the break, the water rippling on the anchor chain which could be followed by the eye through the crystal clear water to where the anchor held in the lagoon floor. The copper sheathing was clearly visible with a few weeds waving from it, fish hung round the stern post and the secret green, the ship-shadow green—the green that is nowhere but in sea water alongside a moored ship—went to Dick’s heart as something new, yet old in memory, a last touch to the wonder and enchantment of the hull, the towering masts, the rigging outlined against the diamond-bright blue of the sky.
Tying the boat to the chain plates he scrambled on board followed by the other. Then he stood and looked about him.
His feet had not rested on the deck of a ship since that time when as a tiny child he stood on the deck of the Rarotonga, Kearney about to hand him into the shore boat, Lestrange waiting to receive him. So many years ago that time had taken away everything from memory, everything but a vague something that was partly a perfume: the smell of a ship in tropical waters, tar, wood, cordage, all intensified by the tropical sun and mixed with sea scents in one unforgettable bouquet.
He swept the deck with his eyes and then looked aloft. The strange thing was that not only did he know all the important parts of the standing and running rigging, but he knew each part by its name, and by its English name; the only remnants of the language of his childhood were here, attached to the down-hauls, the topping lifts, the halyards, the blocks, taught by Kearney and held tightly to his mind by the model; and Aioma, the old child, voracious in sea matters as the child that once was Dick, knew them too, nearly all, taught to him on the model by Dick.
Master and pupil stood for a moment in silence, looking here, looking there, absorbed, taking possession of her with their minds. Then the pupil suddenly clapping his hands began to run about swinging on to ropes, poking his head here and there, now into the galley, now down the foc’sle hatch.
“It is even as it was in my dream,” cried he, “but greater and more beautiful, and she is ours, Taori, and we will take her beyond the reef—e manta Tia kau—and we will fill her sails with the wind; she will eat the wind, there will be no wind left for canoes in all the islands.” As he chattered and ran about, every now and then his face would turn to port as though he were looking for something. It was the obsession of the outrigger. You will remember that even in his dream when half an inch high he had helped to work the model across the rock pool, the dream ship had developed an outrigger; it was so now. The outrigger had so fixed itself in his mind, owing to ancestral and personal experience, as part of the make-up of a sailing craft that Aioma could not escape from the idea of it.
There was something wanting. Reason told him that there was nothing wanting, that the schooner had beam and depth enough to stand up to the wind and sea without capsizing—all the same every now and then, when facing the bow, he was conscious that on his left-hand side there was something wanting, something the absence of which as a stabilizer made him feel insecure.
Dick, having glanced at the compass in the binnacle, of which he could make nothing, turned his attention to the wheel. He had never seen a wheel of any sort before and he had no idea of the use of this strange contrivance. Kearney’s ships were all rigged with tillers. Aioma was equally mystified.
“Le Moan will know,” said he, “and the men she brought with her. But look, Taori.”
He was standing by the saloon hatch and pointing down. He was brave enough on deck, but, like Le Moan, the interior of the schooner daunted him. He had never gone down stairs in his life, nor seen a step, neither had Dick.
The peep down the stairway, the mat below, the vague light through the saloon doorway fascinated Dick without frightening him, and, leaving the other to keep the deck, he came down cautiously, step by step, pausing now and then to listen.
In the saloon he stood looking about him at the handiwork of a civilization of which he knew nothing. The place was in disorder, nothing had been put straight since the fight that still existed in evidence. Bunk-bedding was tossed about, a water bottle lay smashed on the floor by the clothes that once had belonged to Rantan and Carlin. He noticed the telltale compass and the attachments of the swinging lamp, that had been brought on deck, the chairs, the door of the after cabin, the glass of the skylight and portholes, the table on which Rantan had held down Le Moan, the rifles in the rack and the two rifles used by the beachcomber and his companion standing in a corner cleaned and waiting for the deadly work which Le Moan had frustrated.
The smell of the place came to him. The vague odour of sandalwood from the cargo piercing bulkheads and planking, the smell of stale tobacco smoke, fusty bunk-bedding and the trade schooner smell that hinted of cockroaches and coconut oil gone rancid. It seemed part of the place and the place after the first few moments began to repel him.
What came to him through the sense of smell and sight was in fact a waft from the closed spaces of the cities of which he knew nothing, from the men who labour and construct and live and trade crowded like ants under roofs, shut out from the sun and stars and winds of God.
He drew slowly back as though the environment were clinging to him and holding him—but in his hand there was a rifle. Close to him, in the corner by the door, he had seized hold of it. His piercing sight had taken in the shape of the thing used by Rantan in the boat, the thing that spoke so loud and killed at such a distance, and now, seeing the death-dealer so close to his hand, he could not resist it.
He brought it on deck where Aioma was waiting for him and they examined it, but could make nothing of it.
“Let it be,” said the canoe-builder, resting it against the coaming of the skylight. “Le Moan will know, or some of those men she has brought with her.”
He looked round. Something was troubling his mind. Knowing nothing of the use of the steering wheel he was looking for the tiller.
Dick looked about also. On boarding the schooner he had noticed the absence of a tiller, the most striking object on the deck of the model, but other things had so seized him that he put the question by for the moment.
“No matter,” said Aioma, “I know not how we will steer (accoumi) when the sails are given to the wind, but Le Moan, she will know.”
The schooner had two boats, the four-oar and a smaller one black painted, battered by rough usage, but still serviceable. Later that day Aioma brought both boats on to the beach for an overhaul.
The remains of Sru and his companions had been dragged by the women to the outer coral and cast at low-tide mark for the sea to dispose of them. Nothing spoke of the tragedy but the remains of the canoes, the planking of the broken dinghy and the ship swinging idly at her moorings.
It was late afternoon and the crew, released from their wives for a moment, sat round whilst Aioma worked. Le Moan sat close to him but apart from the others, amongst whom was Kanoa.
The eyes of Kanoa might wander here or there, towards the canoe-builder, towards the lagoon, towards the schooner, but they always returned to Le Moan, who sat unconscious of his gaze listening to the talk of the old man and the answering words of Poni, whose dialect was the closest to that of Karolin.
Aioma had taken Le Moan off to the schooner that afternoon when he went to fetch the second boat.
It was not really the boat he wanted. His object was to get the girl on board alone with himself so that she might teach him the secret of the tiller and other things so that he might teach Taori. He was not jealous of Taori on land, he had supported him in every way as ruler, but in sea matters and in the mysteries of construction it was just a little hard that he, Aioma, should be less in knowledge than Taori or be condemned to learn with him from the mouth of a girl.
So, not stealing a march on Taori, but at least not awakening him, as the whole village slept in the heat of early afternoon, Aioma had pushed off with the girl and Kanoa, who, being unmarried, was drowsing close under the shelter of a tree.
Leaving Kanoa to keep the boat they had boarded the schooner alone.
Here the girl had explained the mystery of the wheel, the binnacle, in which dwelt a spirit prisoned there by the white men, the winch for getting up the anchor chain. She told him she alone had been able to steer the schooner and she showed him the compass card whose spear head always pointed in one direction no matter how the ship lay.
She did not know how it told the white men where to go, but she thought it must be friendly to Karolin as it had always pointed away from it. If they had obeyed it, they would not have been killed nor the children of Nanu and Ona, nor would Nanti have been wounded (the boy first shot by Carlin and whom Taori had carried off on his back amongst the trees).
“What of that,” said Aioma, “children are children, and Nanti will take no hurt. He is already running about and the hole in his thigh will fill up— What of all that, beside the ayat?” Yet still his respect for the thing in the binnacle increased, and he followed with his eyes the pointing of the spear head. Why, it was pointing in the direction in which Marua (Palm Tree) lay! Marua, the island of the bad men, who some day—some day would raid Karolin, according to Taori.
He put this matter by in his mind to mature, and then he turned to the last unexplained mystery, the rifle leaning against the saloon skylight just as Dick had left it. She could explain this, too. She had seen Peterson using a rifle for shooting at bottles and her keen eyes had followed everything from the taking of the cartridge from the box to its insertion in the breech, to the act of firing and extraction.
She went to the galley where Carlin had placed the spare ammunition to be handy, and returned with a half full box of cartridges, and, obeying direction, Aioma did everything that Peterson had done. The recoil bruised his shoulder and the noise nearly deafened him, but he was unhurt, neither was the village alarmed owing to the distance, a few birds rose on the reef and that was all. But it was great. The noise delighted him and the smell of the powder. Then leaving the rifle on deck they returned to the beach towing the second boat.
He was talking now as he worked, telling Poni and the others that life on Karolin was not going to be all beer and skittles for them, that as they had joined the tribe and taken wives they would have to work; to work in the paraka patches and in the fishing and to help man the schooner. “For,” said Aioma, “there are things to be done beyond the reef, away over there,” said he straightening himself for a moment and wiping his brow and pointing north, “where lies Marua, an island of tall trees, and evil men who may yet come in their canoes—no matter. It is not a question for you or for me, but for Taori.”
“What you set us to do we will do,” said Poni. “We are not beach crabs, but men, Aioma. What say you, Kanoa?”
Kanoa laughed and glanced at Le Moan and then away over the lagoon.
“I will work in the paraka patches and at the fishing,” said he, “but the work I would like best would be the work of measuring myself against those evil men you speak of, Aioma—that is the work for a man.”
As he spoke the reef trembled and the air shook to a long roll of thunder, an infinite, subdued, volume of sound heart-shaking because its source seemed not in the air above them, but in the earth beneath them and the sea that washed the reef.
The wind had died out at noon, the outer sea was calm and the lagoon, mirror-bright, was making three inch waves on the sand; the tide was at half flood.
Aioma looked about him, the others had risen to their feet and Poni, leaving them, had run on to a higher bit of ground and was looking over the outer sea.
Through the windless air came the outcrying of gulls disturbed and then in the silence following the great sound that had died away, came another silence. The voice of the rollers on the outer beach had almost ceased.
“The sea is going out,” cried Poni, “she is leaving us, she is dying—she has ceased to speak!”
As his voice reached them, they saw the water at the break swirling to an outgoing tide: an outgoing tide at half flood!
Led by Aioma they reached the higher ground, stood and gazed at the sea. The vast blue sea glittering without a touch of wind showed like a thing astray and disturbed. Its rhythm had ceased, swell met counter swell, and the Karaka rock spoke in foam; the wet coral showed the fall of the receding tide, and away to eastward white caps on the flawless blue marked the run of the north-flowing current checked for a moment in its course.
The village, disturbed by the vast rumour from the heart of things and answering to the call of Poni, came crowding out from the trees—the women had caught up their children, the boys and young men had seized spears and bows. They glanced to right and left; a woman cried out; then dead silence fell on them. Every eye was fixed on Aioma.
He was standing on a higher piece of coral, mute, motionless, as if carved from rock, his eyes fixed on the troubled waters. Taori might be their chief, but the wisdom of Aioma they knew of old, and seeing him undisturbed, they remained calm, waiting.
The voice of Poni broke the silence:
“She is coming back.”
The flood was returning, the swirl at the break had ceased and a wave broke on the coral of the outer beach; the line of white caps died away, the Karaka rock ceased to spout, moment by moment the sea resumed her lost rhythm as breaker on breaker came in filling the air again with the old accustomed sound.
A great sigh went up from the people. All was over.
Yet Aioma did not move.
Dick, who had followed with the others, stood beside Katafa. He noticed that the schooner was swinging back to her old position, the incoming tide setting her again bow to the break, that the sea had regained its accustomed appearance, and that the lagoon was filling. All was right again.
Yet Aioma did not move. He stood with his eyes fixed to the far north. Then, suddenly, he turned and sprang from the rock.
“To the trees—to the trees!” He was no longer a man, he was a whirlwind, he rushed on the people with arms outspread, and, turning, they broke and ran.
“To the trees—to the trees!”
A hundred voices caught up the cry, the groves echoed it in a flash, the beach and coral stood empty, the people had taken to the trees; some to the near trees, some racing along the reef sought the great trees of the canoe-builders.
It was not climbing, as we know it. These people, like the people of Tahiti, could literally walk up a tree, bodies bent, hands clinging to the trunk and feet clutching at the bark.
Katafa could climb like this; Dick, less expert but a good climber, followed her, making her go first, seizing before he left the ground a child that held on to his neck. The child was laughing.
Fifty feet above the ground they clung and looked.
From east to west across the sea stretched a line of light, lovely and strange and infinite in length, swift moving, changing in brilliancy yet ever brilliant. Ever advancing, whilst now from tree top to tree top came the cry, shrill on the windless air:
“Amiana—amiana!—the wave—the wave!”
It met the Karaka rock and a great white ghost of foam rose towards the sun. A few seconds later came the boom of the impact followed by the clanging of the reef gulls rising in clouds and spirals; it passed the rock, re-forming, forward sweeping, bearing straight for the reef; a mound of sea towards which the shore waters rushed out as it checked, curved, paled and burst in thunder on the reef, sweeping houses to ruin and flooding into the lagoon.
The trees held though the foam dashed thirty feet up their trunks. Aioma unterrified, with one thought only, the schooner, could see from his aerie that she was safe. Broken by the reef the great wave had not harmed her. But now and again came the cry caught from tree top to tree top.
“Amiana—amiana! The wave—the wave!”
The duplicate, the glittering brother of the first long line of light, was moving as swiftly towards them across the sea. Again the Karaka spouted and the gulls clanged out, again the great green hill of water sucked the shore sea to it, curved, crested and broke to the roar of miles and miles of reef.
The bones of the houses broken by the first great comber could be heard washing amidst the tree roots below and from the canoe-builders’ grove came the crash of a great tree, a matamata, less secure a refuge than the slender-stemmed coconuts. It had fallen lagoonward and the people on it, unkilled, were climbing along it back to shore when yet again came the cry:
“Amiana—amiana! The wave—the wave!”
It was the third great wave, bright like a far glittering bar of crystal, scintillating with speed, sweeping through distance as the others had swept towards the reef and lagoon of Karolin.
But now, after the first outcry, the people in the treetops no longer awaited the coming of the danger in silence.
Their spirit suddenly broke. The sight of this third dazzling apparition was too much. What had they done to the sea that she should do this thing to them? Their houses were gone, the trees were beginning to go; the trees would be destroyed and the reef itself would follow them, for what could withstand the enmity of the sea or the night that sent these vast glittering waves unleashed across her, one following on another—with how many more yet to come!
So as the third great wave drew back in silence for its blow against the land, the voice of Karolin was heard, a lamentable voice against the crying of the gulls; children and women and youths and some of the newcome kanakas joined in the cry, but not Le Moan or Katafa, nor Dick. Not Aioma, who, sure of his beloved schooner, found now time and words to comfort his weaker brethren when the comber crashing in spindrift and thunder left the trees still unbroken and a silence through which his voice could be heard.
He called them names that cannot be repeated, but which heartened them up, then he told them that the worst was over and to look at the sea.
Yes, the worst was over. No fourth brilliant line of light showed like the sword blade of Destruction sweeping over the blue, only a greater heave of the swell lifting the inshore green into breakers, horses of the sea resuming their eternal charge against the long line of the reef.
Dick was the first person down, followed by Katafa.
He nearly stepped on the spinous back of a great fish, a fish such as he had never seen before, larger than a full-grown man and tangled amongst the bushes and the trees.
The ruin was pitiable. Gone were the great canoe-houses, their thatch and ridgepoles floating in the lagoon water, gone the houses of the village, and all their humble furniture, mats and bowls and shelves, knives, implements and ornaments.
Gone were the little ships and each single thing that Dick and Katafa had brought from Palm Tree; gone was Nan, grin and post and all.
The house of the Uta Matu which, despite its walls of cane and roof of thatch, was in fact a public building, the canoe-houses which were a navy yard—three great waves had washed away all visible sign of the past of Karolin; but the people did not mourn, they were alive and the trees were saved, and the wreckage in the lagoon could be collected and rebuilt into new houses. There were three hours yet before sunset and led by Aioma the salvage hunting began, knives were recovered from cracks in the coral and mats that had wrapped themselves round tree trunks, canes and ridgepoles from the near water of the lagoon; the rainy season was far off and in that sultry weather being roofless was little discomfort; a week or more would put the houses up again, the only serious loss was in the paraka patches, washed clean out. But there was paraka growing on the southern beach, which the waves had not affected, and there was the huge fish of which the sea had made them a present.
Not one of them asked why this thing had occurred, or only Dick of Aioma and Aioma of his own soul.
“I do not know,” said Aioma, “only as I stood there I knew in my mind that the sea had not ceased to speak, then I saw the far waves and called to the people to climb the trees.”
Of the little ships, not a trace could be found. They had gone forever to some port beyond recall. Dick, to whom these things had been part of his existence, bound up in his life, left Aioma and sat apart by himself brooding as the dusk rose.
The heat had dried up the moisture that had not drained off into the lagoon and the sleeping mats were spread near to where the house of Uta Matu had once stood, but Dick had no heart for sleep.
Not only were the little ships gone, but everything he and Katafa had brought from Palm Tree. But it was the loss of the ships that hurt.
They were his earliest recollection, they were his toys; they had never ceased to be his toys, he who could kill so well and fight so bravely had never tired of them as playthings, playthings sometimes used in play, sometimes forgotten, but always remembered again. Then they were more than that; who can tell how much more, for who can see into the subliminal mind or tell what dim ghosts hiding in the under mind of Dick were connected with these things—Kearney surely, Lestrange and the men of the Rarotonga, perhaps. Palm Tree and his life on that enchanted island, certainly.
It was as though Fate, in taking his toys, had cut a cord attaching him to his past and the last remnant of civilization. How completely the hand of Fate had done its work he was yet to know.
The stars showed through the momentary gauze of dusk, and then blazed out over a world of night.
Le Moan, who had refused a mat, was nowhere to be seen. She had slunk away into the tree shadows, where, sitting with her back to a tree bole, she could, unobserved, see the reef and the figure of Dick seated brooding, Katafa’s form on the mat where she had lain down to wait for Dick, the foam lifting in the starlight and the sea stars beyond the foam.
What the cassi flowers had said still lingered in the mind of Le Moan.
In that mind so simple, so subtle, so indefinite, so wildly strong, had grown since the night before an energy, calm, patient, sure of itself: a power so large and certain that the thought of Katafa did not even stir jealousy; a passion that could not reason but yet could say, “He is mine, beside me all things are nothing—I want only time.”
Katafa had ruined her imaginary world only to create from the ruins this giant whose heart was determination.
Amidst the trees Kanoa, resting on his elbow, could see Le Moan as she sat, her head just outlined in the starlight.
The mind of Kanoa formed a strange contrast to that of the girl. In his mind there was no surety, no calm. Though he had rescued Le Moan, his heart told him that her heart was far from him, she had no eyes for him and though she did not avoid him, he might have been a tree or a rock, so little did his presence move her—and yet, if only she would look at him once, give him recognition by even the lifting of a finger, all his weakness would be turned to strength, his longing to fire.
Presently as the moon rose high, Le Moan’s head sank from sight. She had lain herself down and the lovesick one, turning on his side, closed his eyes.
Dick, rising and straightening himself and stretching his arms, turned to where Katafa was waiting for him; he made a step towards her and then stood, his eyes fixed across the northern sea.
Cutting the sky from east to west, bright in the light of the moon lay a cloud, a long thready cloud.
No, it was not a cloud, it was too low. It was different; it swelled and contracted, rose and sank.
He called to Katafa and his voice roused Kanoa, whose voice brought Poni from the mammee apple.
In a minute the village was awake and watching this new prodigy, wondering, doubting, the women calling one to the other till the voice of a man rang out:
“Gulls.”
A murmur of relief went up from the women.
Gulls, only gulls. Thousands of gulls flying in line formation—and then the murmur checked and died out.
What was driving the gulls?
A storm coming from the north? No, the sky to the north was stainless and to these people who could smell and feel weather, there was no sign of storm.
“Look!” cried Kanoa.
The formation had altered; sweeping round from the east in a grand curve, the great moonlit line was shortening moment by moment till now it had contracted, showing only the van of the oncomers, who were heading for Karolin through the night sky like a spear towards a target.
The sound of them could now be heard, a steady winnowing sound, the pulse-like beat of ten thousand wings, whilst all along the reef from windward and leeward came the crying of the gulls of Karolin.
The crying of the burgomasters and skuas, the frigate birds and the great southern gannets, the laughing gulls and the Brandt’s cormorants, all rising like a challenge to the newcomers from whom came no response other than the steady throbbing of the wings.
The gulls of Karolin knew, knew that of which the human beings were ignorant—knew that away beyond the sea line some great home of the sea fowl had vanished beneath the waves as Kingaman island and Lindsay island have vanished in the past, as many a Pacific island will vanish in the years to come. Knew that this was an army of invasion, a fight for a home and fishing rights. Knew that the waters of Karolin and the breeding places were insufficient for themselves and the strangers, knew that the moment which all nations and all wild herds and flocks must face, had come, and then as though actuated by one single mind, rose in a vast ringshaped cloud and swept away south.
Swept away south beneath the moon whilst the van of the invaders now nearly above the reef swerved and turning due west, was followed by the whole line in what seemed, at first, level flight. Then rising and curving in a grand curve like that of a spiral nebula it broke into voice, a challenge that was answered from the south.
“Look!” cried Aioma.
The Karolin birds were returning, drifting like a curl of smoke. A wind seemed blowing them lazily through the sky, a wind seemed moulding them and the invaders, till, in the form of two great vortex rings, they overhung the lagoon: a moment and then clashing in battle, they broke, reformed, and broke again, snowing dead and wounded gulls beneath the moon. The storm of their cries filled the night from reef to reef— now they would be dark against the moon, now away like blown smoke.
Sometimes the battle would drift towards the southern beach only to return gliding towards the northern. It was truly the battle that drifted, not the birds.
Just as a flock flies like one bird, moving here, heading there, under the dominion of a common mind, so these two great flocks fought—each not as a congregation, but as an individual; till, of a sudden and as if at the sounding of a trumpet, the combat broke, the storm ceased, the clouds parted, one still circling above the reef, the other drifting away southeast beneath the moon.
Southeast to find some more likely home, to die in the waves, to split up into companies seeking shelter in the Paumotuan atolls—no man could say, or whether the birds of Karolin were the victors or the strangers from the north. Wanderers lost for ever to sight as their home sunk beneath the waves.
Three weeks’ work had recreated the houses broken by the great waves, and put a top knob to the work of the builders. Nan had been recovered. A boy found him cast up in the sand near the break. A new post for him was cut, and Karolin, no longer godless, was itself again. But Aioma was not happy.
The sea when it had swept the reef had not disturbed the tree trunks felled and partly shaped, or had only altered their position slightly as they lay waiting for the canoe-builders to resume work; but Aioma had lost heart in the business. He had come to the conclusion that the schooner was better than any fleet of canoes, and all his desires were fixed on her.
Yet still something called him to the shaping of the logs, the voice of the Unfinished Job perhaps calling to the true workman, or maybe just the voice of habit—all the same he did not turn to it. He was under the spell of the schooner. Pulled this way and that he was unhappy. It is hard to give up a life’s vocation even at the call of something better, and he would sit sometimes squatting on the sands, his face turned now to the object of his passion, and now towards the trees that talked to him of the half-born canoes.
Meanwhile in his mind there lay side by side and growing daily, a great curiosity and a great ambition.
The curiosity had been born of the battle of the gulls.
“What,” asked he of himself, “has happened to the reef of Marua (Palm Tree)?” He knew Marua, he had been one of the fighters in the great battle of long years ago when the men of the north of Karolin had pursued the men of the south and slain them on Palm Tree beach. He had seen the reef and instinct told him that the invading gulls of three weeks ago had come from there.
They were seeking a new home. Why? What had happened to the reef, or what had driven them from the reef?
Had the great waves of the same day, those three great waves that he still beheld scintillating in his mind, had they destroyed the reef? But how could that be, since they had not destroyed Karolin reef? The whole thing was a mystery and beside the curiosity that it excited, there lay in his mind the great Ambition, to take the schooner into the open sea and sail her there.
The lagoon, great as it was, was too small for him, besides, it was dangerous to the west with shoals and banks.
No, the outer sea was the place for him and there came the rub—Katafa.
Katafa had a horror of the vessel. She would not go on board it and well he knew that Taori would not go any distance from Karolin without Katafa, and he (Aioma) greatly daring, wished to go a long way, even as far as Marua, to see what had happened to the reef.
There you have the whole tangle and you can see how the curiosity and the ambition had grown together whilst lying side by side in his mind.
There was also a scheme.
Katafa would not object to Taori going out in the schooner a little way, and Taori would not mind leaving Katafa for a little time. And, thought the cunning Aioma, once we are out beyond there I will tell him what is in my mind about the gulls and the reef and he will want to go and see; it is not far and the colour of the current will lead us as it always has led the canoes, and the light of Karolin in the sky (ayamasla) will lead us back; besides, I will take with me Le Moan, who can find her way without eyes. Cooking this scheme in his mind he said nothing for some days till one evening, getting Taori and Katafa alone with him, he broached the idea of taking the ayat out a little way and to his surprise there was no resistance to it on the part of Katafa.
She had seen Dick’s face light up at the suggestion. His trouble on account of the lost toys had affected her as though the loss had been her own, and she would say no word to mar this new pleasure, she would even overcome her hatred of the schooner and go with him, if he asked her.
But he did not ask her, he knew her dislike of the ship and the idea of taking her along never occurred to him.
“Then,” said Aioma, “to-morrow I will get all things ready with water and fruit, for it is a saying of Karolin that no canoe should ever pass the reef without its drinking nuts lashed to the gratings—one never knows.”
“Aie,” said Katafa. Then she checked herself and turned away whilst Dick and the old man finished their talk.
They had several names for the sea in Karolin, names to suit its moods in storm and calm; one of these names spoke volumes of past history, history of sufferings endured by canoe men through the ages—The Great Thirst.
The sea to the people of Karolin was not an individual, but almost a multitude; the sea of calm, the sea of storm, the sea that canoe men encountered when blown off shore with the last drinking nut gone—The Great Thirst.
Katafa had known of it all her life. Once she had nearly sailed into it, and the words of Aioma about the water for the Kermadec recalled it to her. She shivered, and as the others talked, she scarcely heard their voices, contemplating this new terror which had arisen above her horizon.
But she said nothing, neither that night nor the next day when the casks were being brought on shore to be filled, when the nuts and pandanus fruit were being brought down to the boat by the women, many of them wives of Poni and the others of the crew.
Aioma had told Poni about the coming expedition and the men of the schooner were not only willing to take their places on board again, but eager. Maybe they were tired for a moment of their wives, or just craving for something new—however that may be, they went aboard that night to make preparations for a start on the morrow, leaving their wives on the beach to look after themselves—all but Kanoa.
Kanoa did not go on board. He had had enough experience of that schooner, he did not want to set foot on her again; besides, he wanted to be left behind for his courage was growing and with it the determination to have it out with Le Moan.
So when the others were putting off, Kanoa was not with them. He had gone off along the beach towards the great trees, determining to hide till the schooner was beyond the reef. She was due to go out at dawn or a little later with the ebb tide and he would hide and watching till her topmasts were visible beyond the coral he would come back to the village to find Le Moan.
He would pretend that he had gone fishing on the reef and so had lost the schooner. As he sat down by the great logs of the canoe-builders and watched the stars looking out above the foam, he saw himself returning to the village, the sun in his face, the hateful vessel gone and Le Moan waiting for him.
Kanoa thought in pictures. Pictures suggested to him pictures. He did not know, neither did he picture the fact that Aioma, having decided to take Le Moan with him as a sort of navigating instrument, the girl was at that moment on board of the schooner, asleep, waiting for the dawn, dreaming, if she dreamed at all, of Taori.
The dawn rose up on the shoulder of a southeast wind, warm, steady, and breezing the gold of the lagoon water.
Gulls flew about the schooner on board of which Dick and Aioma had slept so as to be ready for an early start.
Now could be heard Aioma’s voice calling up the hands from the foc’sle and now Katafa, watching from the shore, could hear the sound of the winch heaving the anchor chain short.
Poni, who had been chief man under Sru, knew all the moves in the game. He watched the mainsail set and the fore, the gaskets taken off the jib; talking to Aioma and explaining things, he waited till the canvas was set and then gave the order for the anchor to be got in.
Le Moan watched as Poni, taking the wheel, let the mainsail fill to the wind that was coming nearly dead from the south, whilst the schooner, moving slowly against the trickle of the ebb, crept up on the village and then turning south in a great curve made for the break on the port tack.
Le Moan could see Katafa far away on the shore backed by the trees of the village, a tiny figure that grew less and less and less as the Gates of Morning widened before them and the thunder of the billows loudened.
The sun had lifted above the sea line and the swell and the wind whipped the spray across the coral of the southern pier whilst Aioma, hypnotized, half terrified, yet showing nothing of it all stood, his dream realized at last.
Oh, but the heart clutch when she heeled to starboard and he recognized that there was no outrigger to port—for the outrigger is always fastened to the port side of canoes—no outrigger to port for the crew to crawl out on and stabilize her by their weight, and when she heeled to port the terror came lest the outrigger should be run too deep under.
There was no outrigger, he knew it—but, just as in the dream ship, he could not get rid of the obsession of it.
Moreover, now that the canvas was raised, now that the wind was bravely filling it, the enormousness of the size of those great sails would have set his teeth chattering had he not clenched his jaws.
To take a ship out of Karolin lagoon with the ebb running strong and a south wind, required a cool head and a steady nerve on the part of the steersman. The great lagoon emptying like a bath met the northerly current, the outflowing waters setting up a cross sea. There was also a point where steerage way was lost and it all depended how the ship was set for the opening as to whether she would broach to and be dashed against the coral.
But Poni was used to lagoon waters and the schooner safe in his hands came dead for the centre of the opening; then the ebb took her, like an arrow she came past the piers of coral, met the wash of the cross sea, shook herself and then to the thunder of thrashing, cleared the land and headed north.
“She will eat the wind,” Aioma had once said, “there will be no more wind left for canoes in all the islands”; and now as Poni shifted the helm and the main boom stuttered and then lashed out to port, she was eating the wind indeed, the wind that was coming now almost dead aft. The smashing of the seas against her bows had ceased: with a following swell and a following breeze, silence took them—silence broken only by the creak of timber, block and cordage.
Le Moan looked back again. Almost behind them to the sou’-sou’west Karolin lay with the morning splendour on its vast outer beach whose song came faint across the blue sea, on the tall palms bending to the wind, on its gulls for ever fishing.
Her eyes trained to great distances could pick out the thicker tree clumps where the houses lay and near the trees on a higher point of coral something that was not coral; the form of a girl, a mote in the sea dazzle now perceived, now gone.
Le Moan watched till the reef line was swallowed by the shimmer from which the trees rose as if footed in the sea. She had stirred no hand in the whole of this business: her coming on board had been at the direction of Aioma, the fate that threw her and Taori together even for a few hours whilst separating him from Katafa was a thing working beyond and outside her, and yet it came to her that all this was part of the message of the cassi flowers, something that had to be because of her love for Taori, something brought into existence by the power of her passion—something that united her for ever with Taori.
The mind of Le Moan had no littleness, it was wanting in many things but feeble in nothing; it was merciless but not cruel, and when the sun of Taori shone on it, it showed heights and depths that had only come into being through the shining of that sun. For the sake of Taori she had sacrificed herself to Peterson, for the sake of Taori she had destroyed Carlin, for the sake of Taori she would sacrifice herself again, she who knew not even the meaning of the word “unselfish” or the meaning of the word “pity.”
She could have killed Katafa easily, and in some secret manner—but that would not have brought her Taori’s love, and to kill the body of Katafa, of what use would that be whilst the image of Katafa endured in Taori’s mind.
Katafa was a midge whose buzzing disturbed her dream, it was passing, it would pass.
She turned to where Aioma, who had recovered his assurance and stability of mind, had suddenly flung his arms round Dick, embracing him.
There was something of the schoolgirl in this old gentleman’s moments of excitement and expansion, something distinctly feminine in his times of uplift. No longer fearing capsize, free now of the obsession of the outrigger and glorying in the extraordinary and new sensations crowding on him, he remembered the gulls, the reef of Marua and his scheme.
“Taori,” cried Aioma, “the canoes I have built, nay the biggest of them, are to this as the chickens of the great gull to their mother. Let the wind follow us till the going down of the sun and we will see Marua.”
Dick, for the first time, looked back and saw the far treetops of Karolin. They seemed a vast distance away.
He thought for the first time of Katafa. She had said no word asking him to limit the cruise. Aioma had only suggested taking the ship beyond the reef and the provision of water and fruit had only been taken as a precaution against the dangers of the sea. She had dreaded the business but had spoken no word, fearing to spoil his pleasure, and sure that he would risk nothing for the love of her. But she had reckoned without his youth and the daring which God had implanted in the heart of man; she had reckoned without the extraordinary fascination the schooner exercised upon him and of which she knew next to nothing. She had reckoned without Aioma.
A thread tying his heart to the distant shore twitched as though at the pull of Katafa.
“But Marua is far,” said he.
Aioma laughed. “The canoes have often gone there,” he replied, “and what are they to this? Besides, Taori, it is no idle journey I wish to make, for it is in my mind that it was from the reef of Marua those gulls came that fought the gulls of Karolin, they were seeking a new home. Why?”
“The gulls only know,” replied Dick, “and then there are the bad men whom some day I mean to slay, but not now, for we have not enough men, not a spear with us.”
“We have the speak sticks of the papalagi,” said Aioma, “and I can use them. Le Moan taught me, but the bad men are out of sight; in this business we need not draw nearer to Marua than we are now from Karolin, or only a little. It is the reef I wish to see and what may walk on it, for gulls do not leave their home just because the wind blows hard or the sea rises high. They have been driven, Taori, and what has driven them—greater gulls, or some new form of man—who knows? But I wish to see.”
Dick pondered on this. He had only intended to sail the schooner a short way, to feel her moving on the outer sea, to handle her; with the eating had come the appetite, with the handling of power the desire to use it. He had no fear about getting back, Karolin lagoon light would lead them just as it had led him and Katafa, and his mind was stirred by what Aioma had said about the gulls.
What had happened to drive them away from their home? He had never thought of the matter before in this light, thinking of it now he saw the truth in the words of the other, and having a greater mind than the mind of the canoe-builder, he linked the great waves with the business more definitely than the latter had done.
“Aioma,” said he, “the great waves that broke our houses drove the gulls.”
“But the waves,” said Aioma, “came before the gulls.”
“But the gulls may have rested on the water and come after,” said Dick, “the waves may have broken the reef as it broke our houses.”
“But the reef of Karolin was not broken,” said Aioma.
“The waves may have been greater at Marua,” replied Dick, “and have grown smaller with the coming.”
“I had thought of the waves,” said Aioma; “well, we will see; if the reef of Marua is broken, it is broken; if greater gulls are there, we will see them.”
Dick looked back once again. The treetops of Karolin so far off now showed only like pins’ heads, but the lagoon glow in the sky was definite; ahead could be seen the north-flowing current. Like the Kuro Shiwo of Japan, the Haya e amata current to the east of Karolin showed a blue deeper than the blue of the surrounding sea; but the Kuro Shiwo is vast, many miles in breadth, sweeping across the Pacific from Japan, it comes down the coasts of the Americas—a world within a world, a sea within a sea. The Haya e Amata is small, so narrow that its confines can be seen by the practised eyes of the canoe men, and from the deck of the schooner its marking was clearly visible to the eye that knew how to find it; a sharp yet subtle change of colour where the true sea met its river.
Dick could see it as plain as a road. With it for leader and the lagoon light of Karolin for beacon, they could not lose their way. Then there was Le Moan, the pathfinder who could bring them back even though the lagoon light vanished from the sky.
The weather was assured.
Le Moan had taken the wheel from Poni, who wanted to go forward. She, who had brought the schooner to Karolin was, after Aioma and Dick, the chief person on board; in a way she was above them, for neither Dick nor Aioma had yet learned to handle the wheel.
Forward, by the galley, stood the rest of the crew and Dick’s eyes having ranged over them, turned to Aioma.
“Yes,” said he, “we will go and see.” He turned to the after rail. The treetops had vanished, the land gulls were gone, but Karolin still spoke from the great light in the sky that like a faithful soul remained, above all things, beautiful, assured.
Kanoa, dreading another voyage in the schooner and hating to be parted from Le Moan, hid himself amongst the trees of the canoe-builders.
He was nothing to Le Moan. Though he had saved her from Rantan, he was less to her than the ground she trod on, the sea that washed the reef, the gulls that flew in the air; for these she at least felt, gazed at, followed with her eyes.
When she looked at Kanoa, her gaze passed through him as though he were clear as a rock pool. Not only did she not care for him but she did not know that he cared for her.
Worse than that, she cared for the sun-like Taori. This knowledge had come to Kanoa only the other day.
Sitting beneath a tree, Reason had stood before him and said, “Le Moan does not see you, neither does she see Poni nor Aioma, nor any of the others— Le Moan only sees Taori, her face turns to him always.”
As he lay now by the half-shaped logs waiting for the daylight that would take away the schooner, Reason sat with him telling him the same story, the sea helping in the tale and the night wind in the branches above.
It was night with Kanoa, black night, pierced by only one star—the fact that Taori was going away, if even for only a little time. The perfume of the cassi flowers came to him, and now, with the perfume, a far-away voice calling his name.
It was the voice of Poni. The men were going on board the schooner and Poni was collecting the crew.
Again and again came the call, and then the voice ceased and the night resumed its silence, broken only by the wash of the reef and the wind in the trees.
“They will think I have gone fishing,” said Kanoa to himself, “or that I have gone on a journey along the reef, or perhaps, that the sea has taken me, but I will not go with them. I will not leave this place that is warm with her footsteps, and on all of which her eyes have rested; the place, moreover, where she is.”
He closed his eyes and presently, being young and full of health, he fell asleep.
Dawn roused him.
He could see the light on the early morning sea. The sea grew luminous and the gulls were talking on the wind, the stars were gone, and the ghost of Distance stood in the northern sky blue and gauzy above the travelling sea that now showed the first sun rays level on the swell.
Then Kanoa rose up and came towards the village beyond whose trees the day was burning.
A woman met him and asked where he had been.
“I have been fishing,” said Kanoa, “and fell asleep.” He came through the trees till the beach tending towards the break lay before him and the lagoon. The schooner under all plane sail was moving up towards the village and turning in a great curve, but so far out that he could not distinguish the people on deck. He watched her as she came up into the wind and lay over on the port tack. He watched her as she steered, now, close-hauled and straight, for the Gates of Morning, and then he saw her meet the outer sea.
She was gone. Gone for a little time at least; gone and he was left behind, free in the place Le Moan had warmed with her feet, on every part of which her eyes had gazed, and where, moreover, she was living and breathing.
The women had parted with their new husbands the night before. There was no crowd to watch the vessel go out, only Katafa, a few boys and a couple of women who were dragging in a short net which they had put out during the night, using the smaller of the schooner’s boats which Aioma had left behind. The women stood for a moment with their eyes sheltered against the sun, then they returned to their work whilst Katafa, leaving the beach, came on to the high coral and to the very point of rock where Aioma, standing, had seen the approach of the giant waves.
She had scarcely slept during the night. Taori was going away from her, nor far or for any time, but he was going beyond the reef. To the atoll dweller the reef is the boundary of the world—all beyond is undecided and vague and fraught with danger; the comparative peace of the lagoon waters gives the outer sea an appearance of menace which becomes fixed in the mind of the islander and even a short trip away from the harbour of refuge is a thing to be undertaken with precaution.
But she had said nothing that might disturb Dick’s mind on her account or spoil his pleasure or mar his manhood. Even had the business been visibly dangerous and had Dick chosen to face it, she would not have held out a hand to prevent him. This was a man’s business with which womenfolk had nothing to do. So she ate her heart out all the night and stood waving to him as the boat pushed off and watched the Kermadec leave the lagoon just as she was watching it now out on the sea, sails bellying to the wind and bow pointing north.
She watched it grow smaller, more gull-like and more forlorn in the vast wastes of water and beneath the vast blue sky. On its deck Le Moan was watching Karolin and its sinking reef just as on the reef Katafa was watching the ship and its disappearing hull, dreaming of wreck, of disaster, of thirst for her beloved one, dreaming nothing of Le Moan.
She watched whilst the morning passed, and the schooner still held her course. “She will soon turn and come back,” said Katafa, as the distance widened and the sails grew less, and as the hull sank from sight she strained her eyes thinking that she saw the sails broaden as the ship, tired from going so great a distance and remembering, turned to come back to Katafa.
But the mark on the sky did not broaden. Vaguely triangular and like a fly’s wing it stood undecided in the sea dazzle, it seemed to wabble and change in shape and change back again, but it did not increase, and one moment it would be gone and the next it would say “Here I am again, but see how much smaller I have grown!” Then it vanished, vanished for a long time, only to reappear by some trick and again to vanish and not to return.
The sea had taken the schooner and its masts and spars, its sails, its boat; everything that was mirrored only last evening in the lagoon the sea had taken and dissolved and made nothing of. The sea had taken Poni and Timau and Tahuku the strange kanakas; the sea had taken Aioma, and—the sea had taken Taori.
Oh, the grief! The pain that like a knife cut her heart as she gazed on the sea, on the far horizon line above which the speechless sky stood crystal pale sweeping up to azure. He had gone only a little way, soon to return, storms would not come nor would the wind change, nor would it matter if it did change.
Nothing could keep him from coming back. He had food with him in plenty, water in abundance, he had Poni and Timau and Tahuku and Nanta and Tirai; he had Aioma the wise and he had Le Moan—Le Moan the pathfinder.
Nothing could keep him from coming back and yet the heart of Katafa failed her before that speechless sky and that deserted sea whose meeting lips had closed like the lips of silence upon her lover. Her happiness, so great, perhaps too great, had been cut apart from her for the moment; it stood aside from her never to join her again till Taori came back from what the gods might be doing to him beyond that deserted sea, beneath that speechless sky.
The waters that from all those desert distances drew the voice of indifference and fate that she heard at her feet in the thunder of the breakers, the sky, robbed of speech, yet filled with the ever-lasting complaint of the questing gull.
Someone drew near her. It was Kanoa.
Katafa, who was a friend of all the world, was a friend to Kanoa. She had watched him as he sat apart from the others, noticed his melancholy and spoken to him, asking the reason.
“I am thinking of my home at Vana Vana,” had lied Kanoa, “of the tall trees and the village and the reef, of my young days and my people.” His young days! He who was still a boy!
“But you will return,” said Katafa.
“I do not wish to return,” said Kanoa, “I am as one lost at sea, who has become a ghost, and whose foot may no more be set in a canoe and whose hand may no more hold the paddle.” Then Katafa knew that he was in love, but with whom she could not tell, nor had she time to watch and find out, being busy.
As he drew near her now, she turned to him, and for a moment almost forgot Dick in her anger.
“Kanoa,” said she, “where have you been in hiding? They have gone without you; they called for you and you did not come, and they could not wait. You were wanted to help them in the raising of the sails and the work with the ropes—where have you been in hiding?”
“I have been fishing,” said Kanoa.
“And where are the fish?” asked Katafa.
“Oh, Katafa,” replied Kanoa, “I hid because I could not leave Le Moan, who is to me as the sun that lights me, who is my heart and the pain in my heart, my eyes and the darkness that blinds them when they see her not. I go to find her now to say to her what I have never said and to die if she turns her face from me.”
“And how will you go to find her now?” asked Katafa. “Have you then the wings of the gull and know you not that she has gone with the others?”
“She has gone with the others!”
“She has gone with the others.”
Kanoa said nothing. He seemed to wither, his face turned grey, and his eyes sought the distant sea. He, too, had watched the schooner disappear, rejoicing in the fact that she was gone with Taori leaving him (Kanoa) to find his love. And now Le Moan was gone—and with Taori. But he said nothing.
He turned away and lay down with his face hidden in his arms and as Katafa stood watching him, her anger turned to pity.
She came and sat beside him.
“She will return, Kanoa; they will return: he whom I love and she whom you love. They are gone but a little way. It is because they have gone from our sight that we grieve for them. Aioma said they would go but a little way—aie, but my heart is pierced as I talk, Kanoa, my breast is torn; they have gone from our sight and all is darkness. I will see him no more. I will see him no more.”
Then, as on the night of the killing of Carlin, the man in Kanoa rose up and cast the boy away; saying not a word about his suspicions of the passion of Le Moan for Taori, he turned to comfort the wildly weeping Katafa.
“They will return,” said he, “Aioma is with them and they can come to no harm—they will return before the sun has found the sea or maybe when he rises from it we will see them sailing towards Karolin. Peace, Katafa, we will watch for them, you and I. Go now and sleep and I will wait and watch, and if I see them I will come running to you, and when I sleep you can wait and watch and so with our eyes we will draw them back to us.”
Katafa, whose tears had ceased, heaved a deep sigh. She rose and stood, her eyes fixed on the coral at her feet. Weary from want of sleep, she listened to the words of Kanoa as a child might listen, then, without looking once towards the sea, she passed away towards the trees.
Kanoa stood, his gaze fixed on the sea line, and from then through the hours and the days the eyes of the lovers watched and waited for the return of those who had gone “but a little way.”
Something beside curiosity and the spirit of adventure had made Dick decide to push on towards Marua (Palm Tree).
The truth is Marua was calling to him. He wished to see it again if only for a moment. The hilltop and the groves and the coloured birds sent their voices across the sea to Karolin just as Karolin had sent its appeal across the sea to Katafa when Katafa had lived at Palm Tree.
As a matter of fact those two islands were for ever at war in the battle ground of the human mind. In the old days natives of Karolin had gone to live on Marua, and Karolin had pursued them and brought them back, filling their minds with regret and longing and pictures of the great sea spaces and free sea beaches of Karolin. In the same way natives of Marua had gone to live on Karolin and Marua had pursued them and brought them back, filling their minds with regret for the trees, the hilltop and the blue ring of the lagoon.
Between Dick and Katafa there was only one faint suspicion of a dividing line, something that might increase with the years and make unhappiness the difference between Marua and Karolin: the pull of the two environments so vastly different, the call of the high island and the call of the atoll, of the land of Dick’s youth and the land of the youth of Katafa.
It is extraordinary how the soul of man can be pulled this way and that way by things and forms that seem inanimate and yet can talk—aye, and express themselves in the most beautiful poetry, strike in their own defence through the arms of men, follow without moving though the pursued be half a world away, and inspire a love as lasting as the love that a man or woman can inspire.
The love of a range of hills, what battles has it not won, and the view of a distant cloud, to what lengths may it not raise the soul of man—heights far above the plain where philosophy crawls, heights beyond the reach of thought.
With the suggestion of Aioma, the concealed longing in the mind of Dick began to show itself. He forgot Katafa; he forgot the bad men who had taken possession of Marua, old days began to speak again and the sound of the reef, so different from the voice of Karolin reef, began to be heard.
He watched Le Moan at the wheel, and noticed how her eyes followed the almost imperceptible track far to starboard where the water colours changed. She was steering by the current as well as by the sense of direction that told her that Karolin lay behind. He did not know the speed of the schooner, but he had travelled the road when coming to Karolin with Katafa and he knew that soon, very soon, the hilltop of Marua must show.
He went forward and gazed ahead—nothing. The land gulls had been left behind and in all that sea to the north there was nothing. He came aft to find Poni again at the wheel, and as he came he crossed Le Moan who was going forward; she did not look at him and he scarcely looked at her. Le Moan, for Dick, was the girl who had saved them by killing Carlin and fighting with Rantan till he was overcome; but to him, personally, she was nothing. So cunningly had she hidden her heart and mind that not by a glance or the least shade of expression had she betrayed her secret to him. Kanoa only suspected—but he was her lover.
Aioma was squatted on the deck near the steersman, eating bananas and flinging the skins over his shoulder and the rail.
“Aioma,” said Dick, “there is no sight of Marua yet, but soon we will see it lifted to the sky, with the trees—it calls to my heart. You have seen it?”
“I was one of those who chased Makara and his men to Marua,” said Aioma, “we fought with them and slew them on the beach; aie, those were good times when Uta Matu led us and Laminai beat the drum—taromba—that is only beaten for victory, and will never be beaten again, since it went away with Laminai and has never returned. Tell me one thing, Taori. When you came to Karolin with Katafa, you made friends with the women and children, and Katafa told them a tale, how the canoes of Laminai had been broken by a storm, and all his men lost, and how the club of Matu was found by you on the reef of Marua and the gods had declared you were to be our chief. I was on the southern beach at that time and did not hear the tale, but the women and children took it without any talk, glad to have a man to lead them.
“Tell me, Taori, was that all the tale? I never asked you before and I know not why I ask you now.”
“Aioma,” said Dick, “there was more than that. Laminai and his men came through the woods of Marua and there was a great fight between them and me. I slew with my own hands Laminai and another man. Then, taking fright, all his men ran away and they fought with each other in the woods—many were killed, and then came the big wind from the south and the men who were trying to leave Marua were dashed on the reef, not one being left.”
Aioma forgot his bananas. Some instinct had told him that there was more in the story of Katafa than revealed by her to the women, but he had not expected this.
So Laminai, the son of Uta Matu, had been slain by Taori, and his men put to flight; the storm had destroyed them before they could put away, but it would not have destroyed them only for Taori.
He looked up at Taori, standing against the line of the rail, his red-gold head against the patient blue of the sky, and to Aioma it seemed that this journey they had embarked on was no trip to view the outer beach of Marua—that they had been deluded by the guardians of Karolin and the ghosts of the Ancient, drawn to sea to meet the vengeance of the dead Uta Matu, of his son, and the men slain by the hand and will of Taori.
That thunder from the heart of the sea, those waves from nowhere, the prodigy of the gulls, all these were portents.
“Taori,” said he, “now that you have told me, I would go back. My heart misgives me and if I had known that Laminai fell by your hand I would not have come; I love you as a son, Taori, you fought for the women and children of Karolin against the white men, but you do not know Uta Matu the king, whose son you killed, whose men you put to flight.”
“But Uta Matu is dead,” said Dick, “he has no power.”
“You do not know Uta Matu,” said Aioma, “nor the length of his arm, nor the power of his blow. You have not seen his eyes or you would not say those words. Let us return, Taori, before he draws us too far into his grasp.”
“When I have seen what I wish to see, I will return,” said Dick. He had no fear of dead men, nor of living men either, and for the first time his respect for Aioma was dimmed. “I will return when I have seen what we came to see. I am not afraid.”
Aioma rose and straightened himself.
“I have never known fear,” said he, “and I do not know it now. It was for you I spoke. Go forward then, but this I tell you, Taori, there are those against us who being viewless we cannot strike, whose nets are spread for us, whose spears are prepared.”
“Aioma,” said Dick, “no net can hold me such as you speak of. Nets spread by the viewless ones are for the spirit—Ananda—not the body. My spirit is with Katafa, safe in her keeping, how then can Uta Matu seize it?”
“Who knows?” said Aioma. “He is artful as he is strong, and Le Juan who is dead with him is more artful still, and, look, we have the child of Le Juan’s daughter with us—Le Moan. Aie! had I thought of all this I never would have brought her.”
“How can she hurt us?”
“It is not she. It is Le Juan, the wicked one, whose blood is in her.”
To Aioma, as I have said before, people were not dead as they are with us, only removed to a distance, and though he might speak of Spirits, he spoke of people removed out of sight, yet still potent.
He did not believe that Uta Matu could use a real net or spear against Dick, but he did believe that the dead king of Karolin and his witch woman could, in some way, stretch through the distance to lay nets and strike with spears. Ghostly spears and nets not meant for the body, but the man.
If you could have pierced deeper into the mind of Aioma you would have found the belief—never formulated in words—that a man’s body was just like the shell of a hermit crab, a thing that could be thrown off, crept out of, discarded. Uta Matu when called into the distance had discarded his shell, but the man and his power remained—at a distance.
“I fear neither Le Juan nor Uta Matu,” said Dick, and as he spoke the air suddenly vibrated to the clang of a bell.
It was the ship’s bell.
Tahuku had struck it in idleness, just as a child might, but the unaccustomed sound coming just then seemed to Aioma a response to the words of the other. But he said nothing. Taori had chosen his path and he must pursue it.
At noon the northern horizon still showed clear and unbroken by any sign of land, yet still the wind blew strong and still the schooner sped like a gull before it.
Tahuku, who had been cook and who knew where the stores were kept, prepared a meal; and whilst the crew were eating, Aioma took the place of the lookout in the bow. Nothing—neither land gull nor trace of land. Nothing but the never ending run of the swell bluer from the southern drift that showed still the contrast of the deeper blue.
A road leading nowhere.
The canoe-builder came up to where Dick was standing in the bow.
“Taori,” said Aioma, “we have not lost our way, there runs the current and there Karolin still shows us her light, we have come faster than the big canoes of forty paddles and so have we come since morning, yet Marua is not in sight.”
It was late afternoon, and Aioma as he spoke skimmed the sea line from west to east of north with eyes wrinkled against the light.
“No cloud hides it,” went on the old man like a child explaining a difficulty, “it is full day, yet it is not there—to our sight.”
Dick, as perturbed as Aioma, said nothing. He knew quite well that by now Marua should have been high on the horizon. They had been travelling since morning, how swiftly he could not tell, but with great speed, seeing that they had with them the wind and the current; also the sky stain made by Karolin was now very vague, vague as when he had viewed it from Marua.
“Where then is it gone?” went on the old fellow, “or how is it hidden? Has Uta Matu cast a spell upon us or has Marua been washed away?” Then turning as if from a suddenly glimpsed vision: “Taori—we may sail till the days and the nights are left behind us with the sun and the moon and the stars, but Marua we shall not see again.”
Dick still said nothing. He refused to believe that Uta Matu had the power to put a spell on them and he refused to believe that Marua had been washed away by those waves that did little more than smash a few houses at Karolin. All the same he was disturbed. Where then was Marua?
Poni, who was standing near them with Le Moan who had heard what Aioma said, suddenly struck in, in his sing-song voice.
“Surely we passed an island when Pete’son commanded this ship and we were running on this course, an island that would be about here, but is not here any more—and you remember the great waves that came to us at Karolin and the gulls who sought a home? All these things have just come together in my head as it might be three persons meeting and conversing. Well then, Aioma, it is clear to me now that this island you seek is gone beneath the sea. At the time of the gulls and those great waves, I said to Timan, that somewhere an island had gone under just as Somaya which lay not far from Soma went under in the time before I started to sail in the deep-sea ships. One day it was there and the next day it was not, and there were the big waves just like those that came to Karolin. Marua, you called this island; well, Aioma, you may be sure that Marua has gone under the sea.”
And now strangely enough Aioma, so far from accepting the support of this statement, turned upon the unfortunate Poni who had dared to bring experience and common-sense with him to the bar.
“Gone under!” The scream of laughter with which Aioma received this suggestion when it had percolated down into the basement of his intelligence made the faces of the others turn as they stood about near the foc’sle head discussing the same subject.
“Gone under!” What did Poni mean by such silly talk, did he not know that it was impossible for an island to sink in the sea? Sink like a drowning man! No, the great waves had knocked Marua to pieces, either that or Uta Matu had veiled it from their sight ... and so the talk went on and all the time the sun was falling towards the west and Le Moan’s palms were itching to feel again the spokes of the wheel and the kick of the rudder; for a plan had come into the mind of Le Moan, a plan put there maybe by Uta Matu, who can tell; or Passion, who can tell? But a perfectly definite plan to take the wheel, steer through the night and put the schooner absolutely and fatally astray: Put her away from Karolin so far and so much to the east that the lagoon light would be no guide and a course to the south no road of return.
The plan had come to her, fallen into her head, only just now; it was indefinite, but cruelly straight like the flight of an arrow, and in one direction—away from Karolin.
Great love is an energy that, born in mind, has little to do with mind. It is a thing by itself, furiously alive, torturing the body it feeds on and the mind that holds it. Hell is the place where lovers live. Even when they escape from it to heaven as in the case of Katafa, it is always waiting to receive them back, as also in her case.
To Le Moan, dumbly suffering, the message of the cassi flowers telling that Taori was hers by virtue of the power of her passion for him, had suddenly lost all significance. He was here now by the power of the wheel of the ship over the rudder. She could take him away, now, to be always with him—take him away for ever from Katafa, steer him into the unknown. And yet the knowledge of this physical power and the determination to use it brought her no ease. She would be close to him, but of what avail is it to a person suffering from the tortures of thirst if he is close to water yet may not drink. All the same she would be close to him.
As she watched the sun so near its setting she dwelt on this fact as a bird on the egg it is hatching, and brooding, she listened whilst Aioma urged that they should turn back at once, and Dick countered the suggestion asking for more time. He had it in his mind to hold on till sunset, till night came to cut them off in the quest. Well knowing in his mind that Marua was no more, that the reef and lagoon and hilltop, the tall trees and coloured birds had all vanished like a picture withdrawn, either gone beneath the sea as Poni said or devoured by the waves as Aioma held—well knowing this in his mind, his heart refused to turn from the quest till turned by darkness.
He would never see Palm Tree again. Like grief for a person lost, the grief of this thing came on him now. He knew now how he loved the trees, the lagoon, the reef, and he recalled them as one recalls the features of the dead. He could not turn till darkness dropped the veil and said to him definitely, “Go back.”
He was standing with this feeling in his mind when a sound made him turn to where Aioma had suddenly taken his seat on the edge of the saloon skylight with body bent double and head protruding like the head of a tortoise. He seemed choking. He was laughing.
Aioma, like Sru, had a sense of humour, and a joke, if it were really a good joke, took him like the effect of a dose of strychnine. Sure now that Marua had been swallowed by the sea, the catastrophe, having made itself certain and obtained firm footing in his mind, suddenly presented its humorous side. He had remembered the “bad men.” They were swallowed with Marua, he could see them in his imagination swimming like rats, screaming, bubbling—drowning—and the humour of the thing skewered him like a spear in the stomach.