IN THE NIGHT
Dick, when sleep took him that night, passed straight into dreamland. He
rarely dreamed. When he did, his dreams had always one origin, some
vexation or irritation experienced during the day. He would be trying to
light a fire that would not light, or the dinghy would be sinking under
him, or, going to cut bananas, the banana trees would be gone; those
were the sort of dreams that came to Dick. Katafa had never entered them
till to-night, when suddenly he found himself chasing her over the sands
of sleep, chasing her, spear in hand, till she dashed into the lagoon
and became a fish, the most beautiful fish in the world, glimpsed for a
moment like a flash of silver.
He had hunted for her till dusk through the trees, beside the lagoon,
right to the eastern beach, and now in dreamland he was hunting her
again. Ye gods and writers of the old romance, creators of the lovesick
swain! Hunting her like an animal, possessed with one overmastering
desire, the desire to seize her.
Suddenly the dream was shattered. Sitting up, he saw the world outside
the house clearly in the moonlight as though seen by day. A sound filled
his ears. It was the sound of the conch.
He was master of all the sounds of his world. The island was always
talking to him—the reef and the sea. Here was something new and unknown
and inimical.
It came from the eastern beach, that beach which faced the gateway to
the world beyond. The sound ceased, the echoes died, and the night
reserved its silence. Dick, still listening without a movement, heard
the reef speaking to the first waves of the ebb, the fall of a leaf on
the roof, and the furtive sound of a robber crab by the house wall on
the right. Then, rising, he came out into the moonlight, moving silently
as his own shadow.
A fish spear was standing against the house wall. He took it and came
along by the trees, listening, pausing every now and then, seeming to
scent the air like a hound. Nothing. He turned his face towards the
lagoon. Nothing. The great mirror lay unruffled to the reef, and beyond
the reef the sea stars shone paled by the moonlight but steadfast and
untroubled.
The island said to him: “There is nothing here at all but the things you
have always known. That voice was the voice of some sea beast that came
like the big fish and has gone.”
Yet still he listened.
Ah, what was that? A branch stirred and, turning, he saw, like a ghost
amidst the trees, Katafa.
She was standing, the moonlight on her face and her arms outstretched.
Next moment she had turned, vanished, and he was in pursuit. The woods,
one vast green glow under the moon, were lit almost as brilliantly as by
day, and as she ran he could see, now a glossy shoulder, now her whole
form, now nothing but swaying leaves above which the convolulus flowers
seemed the bugles of aerial huntsmen joining in the chase.
He was not hunting alone. The woods to-night were full of armed men, men
who at the sound of the conch had spread and entered the groves like a
bunch of shadows, beating the trees and glades, dumb as hounds when hot
on the scent.
The line Katafa had taken was towards these. Pitcher plants cascaded
their water as she ran dashing them aside, and branches foiled him as he
pursued; great perfumed flowers hit him in the face. Now he had almost
seized her, and now she was gone, saved by a branch or tangle of liana.
The trees broke to a glade carpeted with slippery moss spread like a
snare to betray her. Crossing it, she fell. She was his, he flung
himself upon her, and fell on the hard ground. He had not even touched
her. By a last miracle she had saved herself and was gone, doubling back
through the trees.
The fall half stunned him for a moment. Then, getting on his feet, he
seized the spear; all through the chase he had carried it slanted over
his shoulder, carried it unconsciously or instinctively, just as he had
carried it in dreamland. Balked and furious, not knowing what he did, he
brandished it now as if threatening some enemy; then, reason returning,
he stood resting on it and listening.
He knew she had escaped. To lose sight of a person for half a minute in
that place was to lose him. Dick’s only chance was to track her by
sound, but he could hear nothing. Not the breaking of a twig or the
rustle of a leaf came to tell him of where she might be or what line she
was taking. He did not even know whether she had dived into the trees,
to right or left, or before or behind him; the fall had blotted out
everything for a moment, and in that moment she had vanished.
With head uptossed, and leaning on the spear, he stood like a statue,
more beautiful than any statue ever hewn from marble, the tropical trees
still as the moon above him, the sound of the far-off reef a confused
murmur on the windless air.
Then his chin sank ever so slightly. A sound had come to him, something
that was not the reef.
It was—she. He could hear the leaves moving—a step—louder now; she was
coming towards him and coming swiftly; she had lost her direction and
was blundering back to the place she had started from.
He waited without a movement. The foliage dashed aside and into the
glade broke, not Katafa, but Ma, the son of Laminai, with the moon full
upon him.
Ma, club in hand, the shark-tooth necklace showing white as his eyeballs
in the strong light. Ma, lithe and fierce as a tiger, and petrified for
the moment by the sight before him.
The two faced one another without a word. Then the figure of Ma seemed
to shrink slightly, relaxed itself suddenly, sprang, slipped on the
treacherous moss, and fell with the cruel fish spear bedded in its back
and heart.
The club shot away across the carpet of moss, and Dick was in the act of
turning to seize it, when out from the trees broke Laminai—Laminai, with
twenty others behind him. Ma had been the vanguard of these.
Dick turned and ran. Dashing among the leaves, he ran, weaponless,
defenceless, with sure death on his heels and only one craving, to free
himself from the woods, to find an open space, to escape from the
branches that checked him, the flowers that hit at him, the veils and
veils and veils of leaves. Instinctively he made uphill, the pursuit
almost touching him, the groves ringing now to the cries of the pursuers
and of Talia, Manua and Leopa, who had recognised him as the slayer of
Sru and were shouting the news to Laminai.