BLOWN TO SEA
This evening, just before sunset, Katafa was standing on the beach
waiting for Taiofa, the son of Laminai. They were going out to fish for
palu beyond the reef.
Straight as a dart, naked but for a girdle of dracæna leaves, she stood,
her eyes sweeping the lagoon water where the gulls were fishing.
Near by some native girls were helping to unload a canoe that had come
over from the southern beach, and as they talked and laughed over the
work, flat-nosed and plain, muscular and full of the joy of life, they
formed the strangest contrast to the Spanish girl in the dawn of her
beauty. Slim, graceful as a young palm tree, Katafa stood separate from
the others in spirit as in body.
The work of Le Juan had been well done and the result was amazing, for
Katafa from all other human beings stood apart, ringed by the mystic
charm of _taminan_.
One might have said of her that here was a living, breathing human being
who yet was divorced from humanity. Every movement of her body, her
glance, her laughter, spoke of a spirit irresponsible, thoughtless,
light as the spirit of a bird. She who touched nothing but the food she
ate, the ground she trod on and the water she swam in, who had never
grasped a living thing since the tragedy of the Spanish ship so long
ago, had seemingly failed to find the hold upon life given to the least
of the Kanaka girls amongst whom she had grown up—creatures almost
animal, yet human in affection and tied together by the common bonds of
joy and hope and fear. One of the strangest effects of the terrible law
under which Katafa lived was her insensibility to fear.
The natural law of compensation gave to the isolated one fearlessness
and the power to stand alone, and to the one who had no use for a soul
the lightness of spirit and waywardness of a bird, the irresponsibility
of the flower moved by the wind. Katafa—well was she named as she stood
there, her mind roving with the frigate birds across the sunset-tinged
waters of the lagoon.
“O he, Katafa!”
It was Taiofa, sixteen years of age and strong as a grown man. He was
carrying a big basket containing food and several young drinking
cocoanuts, the lines and bait; the canoe that was to take them lay on
the beach, the water washing its stern, and between them they put off,
Taiofa running up the sail to catch the favouring westerly wind.
Katafa steered with a paddle. The tide was running out and they cleared
the break just as the setting sun touched the far-off invisible western
reef.
Out here they met the swell and, with the wind blowing up against the
night and the last of the sunset on the sail, they steered for the
fishing bank and the forty-fathom water that lay three miles to the
northeast.
The water off Karolin is a mile deep; then the soundings vary towards
the bank, the floor of the sea rising in terrace-like steps to within
forty fathoms of the surface.
Neither Katafa nor her companion spoke, or only a word now and then.
Steering an outriggered curve required attention, for if the outrigger
dips too deep there may be disaster; as for Taiofa, he was busy
overhauling the tackle, the anchor which was simply a chipped lump of
coral, and the mooring rope.
The Spanish ship had been a blessing to Karolin. Before burning and
scuttling, the natives had looted her. The rope Taiofa was handling had
been made from part of her running rigging unwoven and retwisted, the
fishing hooks beaten out of some of her metal. Having placed everything
in order, he crouched, brooding, his eyes fixed on the last tinge of
sunset, and then raised to the outjetting stars.
A three-days-old moon hung, half tilted, like a boat rising on a steep
wave, its light trickling on the swell and turning the outrigger spume
to silver. A last fishing gull passed them making for the land, and now,
as though assured of their position by chart, compass, and sounding
lead, the sail was hailed and the anchor dropped, the canoe riding to it
bow to swell.
Whilst the boy fished, the girl watched, a heavy maul beside her for the
stunning of the palu when caught; from far away, and borne on the wind,
came the voice of the reef, a confused indefinite murmur from the
vastness of the night, answered only by the slap of the water on the
planking as the northward-running current strained the anchor line.
An hour passed, during which the fisherman hauled in a few small
schnappers whilst the girl, perched now on the pole of the outrigger,
watched the seas go by flowing up out of the night ahead and passing in
long rhythmical columns of swell, star-shot and rippling on the anchor
rope; the schnappers lay where they were cast, like bars of silver
leaping now and again to life, whilst on the wind the invisible beach of
Karolin still sent the murmur of the breakers on the coral.
“The palu are not,” said Taiofa, “but—who knows?—they may come before
dawn.”
“Better then than not at all,” said the girl, “but it is not the palu, O
he, Taiofa; we should have waited for a bigger moon.”
The fisherman made no reply and the girl relapsed into herself in a
silence broken only by the far-off beach.
Hours passed and then at last came the reward, the line ran out and the
boy, calling to the girl to steady the canoe, hauled whilst the great
fish fought, now darting ahead till the bow overran the anchor rope, now
zigzagging astern. Now they could see it fighting below the surface and
now thrashing the starlit water to foam; it was nearly alongside, and
Taiofa was shouting to his companion to get ready to strike, when of a
sudden the night went black; the squall was on them.
They had not noticed it coming up from the south. The smash of the rain
and the rush of the wind took them like the stroke of a hand.
Taiofa, dropping the line which ran out, flung his weight to the
outrigger side, whilst the girl, instinctively and at once, dropped the
maul and sprang aft to the steering paddle. Her thought was to keep the
canoe head to sea, but the anchor rope had parted and the canoe, instead
of broaching to, was running in some mysterious manner before the squall
stern on to the leaping swell.
It was the palu. The end of the line was tied to the bow and the great
fish driving north was towing them.
Then, with a last roaring cataract of rain, the squall passed and the
stars appeared, showing the tossing sea and Taiofa gone! He had been on
the forward outrigger pole and the sea had taken him, leaving neither
trace nor sound. The canoe had possibly overrun him; she did not know,
nor did she care: Taiofa was less to her than an animal, and the
devouring sea was feeling for her to devour her.
Something hit her like the stroke of a whip. It was the sheet of the
mast sail that had broken loose. She seized it, fastened it, and then,
as the sail filled before the wind, steered. The palu, feeling the
slackening of the line, made a dash at right angles to their course. She
saw the line tauten out to starboard and countered with the paddle
before the bow could be dragged round. Then the line went slack; it had
either broken or the fish had unhooked.
Then she steered, the big waves following her, and the wind that had
fallen to a strong breeze filling the sails.
To turn was impossible in that sea, and even with the bow to the south
she could never have made Karolin against the wind with a single paddle
and that clumsy sail.
In the hands of the God who sends the seeds of the thistle adrift on the
wind, fearless, and grasping the paddle, she steered with only one
object—to keep the little craft from broaching to.
Blown to sea! For ages across the Pacific the seeds of life have passed
like that from island to island, borne in lost canoes blown off the land
at the mercy of chance and the wind.