WAR
“Katafa,” said Dick that night as they sat after supper, idle, watching
the dusk rise over the lagoon, “men came to-day in a boat like yours.”
Katafa heaved a great sigh; then she sat as if the breath were stricken
out of her, without a word, her eyes fixed on the other.
He had said nothing of the affair till now, a fact that spoke volumes as
to their mental relationship. Between Dick and Kearney there had been
little of what we call conversation, between Dick and Katafa none. The
inanimate things around them had the time of their lives; they did the
talking or supplied the talk. Abstractions had no place in this strange
community of two where the actual moment was everything, at least to
Dick.
“Men?” said the girl, breaking the silence at last. “Where are they?”
“Gone,” said Dick. “I struck one and they went away, all but the one.”
Some instinct checked him, helped by dislike of the labour of talking.
Dick could think up things from the past easily enough if they were
recent, but to arrange them in the order of thought, dressed in and
connected by words, was becoming a hateful labour.
It was extraordinary. The things he saw or touched gave him no trouble,
but the things he had seen or touched, even though it were only an hour
ago, were bothersome when they had to be turned into talk.
He lay back and yawned. Then, rising up, he went down to the lagoon
bank, and the girl, watching in the dusk, saw him getting into the
dinghy. He was bailing water out of her. That done, he busied himself
for a few minutes overhauling the lines and putting them back in the
locker. Then he walked off to the house and turned in, without a word,
just as a cave man might have done in the days before speech was
invented.
The girl, left to herself, turned on her side and then on her face,
lying with her forehead on her crossed arms, brooding, suffering, dumb.
Karolin had drawn close to her and drawn away again, perhaps for ever,
but Karolin was only a thought. Something deeper than thought had her in
its grip, something that had risen in her mind to destroy Dick just as
Nanawa had risen from the sea to destroy Kearney.
Once a law becomes part of the human mind, it becomes a living thing
capable of good and evil, and the law of _taminan_ implanted in the mind
of Katafa, though simple as the law of gravity, became capable of
profound effects—became, in fact, a beast of prey.
Thou shalt not touch another nor be touched. What law could be simpler
than that or more seemingly innocent? Yet of Katafa it had made a
creature beyond human sympathy and appeal. It lay in her soul as the
barrel-shaped decapod lay in the sea, watchful, ever waiting to strike,
ever fearful of being itself destroyed.
To clearly understand the power of _taminan_, one must recognise that
its hold was not upon conscious thought but on the subconscious basis of
thought beyond the power of will and reason, and yet capable of rousing
will and reason into action, capable of inspiring the mind with aversion
and hatred.
It had roused her thinking mind against Kearney, who had threatened it,
and now as she lay with her face on her crossed arms, it was rousing her
against Dick, calling on her to destroy him. Why? Dick had never tried
to touch her, never threatened her, yet the beast of Le Juan in her soul
dreaded Dick even more than it had dreaded Kearney.
Up to this, just as in the case of Kearney at first, her conscious mind
had set itself against Dick in all sorts of trivial ways, breaking
fishing lines and blunting the spears, but now, as in the case of
Kearney when he hit her in the back with the ball, it had something
definite to cling to. Dick had sent the canoes back to Karolin.
It was full night now, and as she rose and came down to the lagoon bank,
the wind from the sea came warm and strong, breezing up the water and
bringing with it the sound of the reef and the scent of the outer beach.
It was low tide. She cast her eyes on the dinghy where it lay moored to
the bank. Dick, inspired by the sapling he had cut for the support of
Nan, had made a little mast for the boat. The sail of Katafa’s canoe,
which had not been destroyed, was lying in the shack behind the house
and he intended using it for the purpose of cruising about the lagoon.
She looked at the mast and the trivial thought of destroying or hiding
it crossed her mind only to be dismissed.
Then, turning from the bank, she drew near the house and, close to the
doorway, sank down, sitting on her heels, her face towards the doorway,
listening.
She could hear nothing for a moment but the gently stirring foliage as
it moved to the wind. Then, as she listened, clasped in the sound of the
softly moving leaves, she heard the breathing of Dick in his sleep.
The interior of the house was dark except for a few points of starlight
piercing the roof, but, as she gazed, her eyes growing accustomed to the
darkness, the little ships began to show on their shelves, guarding the
dreams of the sleeper beneath.
Once, long ago, on the very first night she had passed on the island,
the prompting had seized her to set fire to the house, but the ships had
saved Kearney and the boy. Now, darkly rising from the recesses of her
mind, the prompting came again and the ships were no longer potent
against it. She had handled one of them and though its god had brought
Kearney running to its rescue, the god had done nothing else—could not
even protect Kearney when Nanawa had seized him on the reef—a futile
sort of deity, surely.
She could see the little shelf in the starlight and the match-box upon
it. She rose to her feet without a sound and was moving towards the
shelf, when a voice struck her motionless.
It was the voice of Dick fighting his battle with Sru over again in his
dreams.
“Katafa!” came the voice, “hai amonai Katafa—help! He is seizing me!”
Then a mumble of unintelligible words dying off to silence and the sound
of Dick tossing uneasily in his sleep.
She stood with the starlight showering on her and the wind stirring her
hair. Something had come between her and the deathly prompting to
destroy him. Perhaps it was the voice suddenly shattering the silence
and her purpose, or the appeal for help, the first that had ever reached
her from human being.
She stood with her head uptilted as a person stands who is trying to
catch some far-away sound. Then she drifted away, crossing the sward and
vanishing among the trees.
Lying in her shack, she knew that the shark-toothed god had been about
to seize Taori with claws of fire—as indeed he had. Taori had called to
her for help, and she had helped by not firing the thatch. She could not
understand in the least why she had held her hand, or why the appeal for
help had so shattered her purpose. She didn’t try. She only knew that
something had balked her for the moment.