THE BIRTH OF A SEA KING
They had with them food and water enough for a week. Dick had left
little to chance. When a tiny child, he had almost frightened Kearney by
putting the fish away in the shadow of the thwart to prevent the sun
from spoiling it, and this natural ability for dealing with things,
which had been a gift from his parents, had not been decreased by life
on the island.
Now, with all he had ever known taken away from him by distance, facing
a new world and the unknown sea, this ability to deal with things showed
itself in his fearlessness and absolute confidence in himself, the boat
and the course they were steering.
By noon they had been twelve hours on their journey, making two and a
half knots against the current. Thirty miles to the north lay Palm Tree,
whilst in the south, like a beacon, the forty-mile lagoon of Karolin
signalled to them from the blue; and now, as it drew towards sunset,
Katafa, who had fallen asleep, awoke and, sitting up, seemed listening
as though to catch the sound of something she had heard in her dreams.
There was nothing, nothing but the slap of the bow wash and the creak of
the mast and the lapping of the long swell as it kissed the planks,
nothing but the cry of a gull that passed them. It was flying south.
Yet still she listened, resting her head against the gunnel, her eyes
fixed on the space of sky beneath the sail. Nothing.
Then, as the sun, now far down in the west, was reaching to the sea that
boiled up in gold to meet him, Katafa raised her head.
Dick heard it now, a faint, far breathing, a murmur that came and passed
and came again, a voice that was not the wind.
It was Karolin—Karolin invisible but singing, calling the gulls home
across the evening sea.
Far away they could be seen flying from east and west towards the
invisible land, and now as the sun went down like a ship on fire and a
single great star broke out above the purple west, the whisper of the
great forty-mile reef loudened and changed to a definite murmur like the
voice of a far-off multitude.
Katafa, standing up for a moment and steadying herself with her hand on
the mast, seemed to have forgotten Dick. Karolin was still a great way
off, but its voice was enough to dispel all doubt and fear. She knew
these waters, and all the old sea instincts that had given her distance
and direction when out in the fishing canoes returned, led by memory and
the voice of the reef.
The fishing bank where the squall had struck her canoe, blowing Taiofa
overboard, lay straight before them. They could anchor there for the
night; it was safer to make the lagoon entrance in the morning.
She told him this, and then, resting in the bottom of the boat with her
elbow on a thwart, she watched and listened whilst the moon and the
stars took the sky, and the voice of the distant reef came louder
against the wind.
The tide was beginning to flood on Karolin, and the air was filled with
the rumour of it; it seemed the wind and tide were building the sea on
the coral, to come from everywhere around, from the very stars that lit
the night.
Then the running swell, looming up and passing in the gloom, altered in
character, and away to starboard something showed white—something that
came and went like the flicker of a handkerchief, a natural sea beacon,
the foam on the Kanaka rock.
Katafa knew. They were on the fishing bank.
The Kanaka rises sharp, like the spire of a cathedral, from the great
mountain range that forms the palu bank. At full flood it is submerged
entirely, but even then it will break if there is a heavy swell on. It
is the only sign of the bank and the only danger to ships, but to Katafa
it was a friend.
Crawling forward, whilst Dick let go the sheet, she dropped the anchor
they had so often used when fishing off Palm Tree; it fell in
twelve-fathom water and held.
It was near here that she had anchored when the squall struck the canoe,
driving her from Karolin, but to-night there was no danger of squalls.
The wind had sunk to a steady breathing from the north, and the swell
had fallen to a gentle heave that rocked the little boat like a cradle
to the lullaby of the surf.
Dick, tired out, had fallen asleep lying in the bottom of the boat,
clasped by the girl, just as his father had fallen asleep long years ago
clasped by Emmeline and death.
But death was far away to-night. Life ringed the sleepers with its
charm, and the future spoke in the voice of the reef.
“Taori, Karolin has called you to be her king and rule her people and
make her laws and break her chains of error; for this you were born, for
this you still live, and war shall be your portion whilst you live, and
peace shall crown your victories and lead you at last to the eternal
peace which is Freedom.”
With his head on the pasht, unconscious as the dead, he slept whilst the
sea wind blew and the great reef sang, mourned, murmured and spoke.