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.

CHAPTER IX—VENGEANCE

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 _n_th 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.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I—LE MOAN WILL KNOW

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.”

CHAPTER II—THE THREE GREAT WAVES

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.

CHAPTER III—THE SECOND APPARITION

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.

CHAPTER IV—WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE REEF?

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.

CHAPTER V—MAINSAIL HAUL

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.

CHAPTER VI—VOICES OF THE SEA AND SKY

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.”

CHAPTER VII—ISLANDS AT WAR—THE OPEN SEA

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.

CHAPTER VIII—WE SHALL NOT SEE MARUA AGAIN

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.