Le Moan had never known pity. She had lived amongst the pitiless, and if any seed of the divine flower lay in her heart it had never grown nor come to blossom. She had seen her tribe raided and destroyed and the remnants chased to sea by the northern tribe under Uta Matu, she had seen battle and murder and sudden death, storm and destruction; she had seen swordfish at war and the madness and blood-lust of fish, bow-head whales destroyed by orcas and tiger sharks taking men—all these things had left her unmoved by pity as they would have left Rantan. Yet between these two pitiless ones lay a distance greater than that between star and star.
Le Moan had sacrificed herself for the sake of Taori; had faced what was more terrible than death—the unknown, for the sake of the man who had inspired her with passion; and had found what was more terrible than death—separation.
To return and find Taori she would, if necessary, have destroyed the Kermadec and her crew without a second thought, just as to save him she would have destroyed herself. Rantan could not have understood this, even if it had been carefully explained to him with diagrams exhibiting the savage soul of Le Moan, all dark, save where at a point it blazed into flame.
All that day working out his black plan he reviewed his instruments, Sru, Carlin, the crew, the ship, and last and least the kanaka girl who would act as a compass and a navigator. A creature of no account save the instinct she shared with the fish and the birds, so he fancied.
The Kermadec had loaded some turtle shell at Soma and at Levua she was to pick up a cargo of sandalwood. San Francisco was the next port of call, but to Rantan’s mind it did not seem probable that she would ever reach San Francisco. It all depended on Carlin. Rantan could not do the business alone even with the help of Sru; Carlin was a beachcomber and to leave him with a full whiskey bottle would have been fatal for the whiskey bottle, but he was a white man; he would have been fired off any ship but the Kermadec, but he was a white man. Rantan felt the necessity of having a white man with him on the desperate venture which he had planned, and taking Carlin aside that night he began to sound him.
“We’re due at Levua to-morrow,” said Rantan. “Ever been to Levua?”
“Don’t know it,” replied the other, “don’t want to neither; by all accounts, listening to the old man, there’s nothing there but one dam’ sandalwood trader and the kanakas he uses for cutting the wood. I want to beach at Tahiti, that’s where I’m nosing for when I get to ’Frisco; there’s boats in plenty running down from ’Frisco to Tahiti.”
“Maybe,” said Rantan, “but seems to me there’s not much doing at Tahiti. Hasn’t it ever hit you that there’s money to be made in the islands and better work to be done than bumming about on the beach? I don’t mean hard work, handling cargo or running a ship—I mean money to be picked up, easy money and plenty of it.”
The big red man laughed and spat over the rail.
“Not much,” said he, “not by the likes of me or you; clam shells is all there’s to be picked up by the likes of me and you when the other chaps have eaten the chowder.”
“How’d you like ten thousand dollars in your fist?” asked Rantan, “twenty—thirty—there’s no knowing what it might come to, and all for no work at all but just watching kanakas diving for pearls.”
Carlin glanced sideways at his companion.
“What are you getting at?” asked he.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Rantan, “I know of a pearl island and it’s not far from here. It’s a sealed lagoon, never been worked, and there’s enough there to make a dozen men rich, but to get there I’d want a ship, but I haven’t got one nor the money to charter one; I’m like you, see?”
“What are you getting at?” asked Carlin again, a new tone in his voice.
“I’m just saying I haven’t a ship,” replied the other, “but I know where to get one if I could find a chap to help me in the taking of her.”
Carlin leaned further over the rail and spat again into the sea. With terrible instinct he had taken up the full meaning of the other.
“And how about the kanakas?” asked he, “kanakas are dam’ fools, but get them into a court of law and they’re bilge pumps for turning up the evidence. I’ve seen it,” he finished, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “A sinking job it was, and the chap that did it got ten years, on kanaka evidence.”
Rantan laughed. “Leave the kanakas to me,” said he, “I’m putting it to you—if I’ve the sand to do the job, would you help?”
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t,” said Carlin, “but what about the navigating? You aren’t much good on that job ... or are you? I’m thinking maybe you’ve been holding it up your sleeve.”
“I’m good enough to get there,” replied Rantan. “Well, think it over, we’ve time in our hands and no need to hurry. But remember there’s no knowing the money in the business, and if it comes to doing it, don’t you worry about risks; I’m not a man to take more than ordinary risks and I’ll fix everything.”
Then he turned away and walked aft leaving Carlin leaning on the rail.
Whatever Carlin’s start in life may have been, he was now beach-worn like one of the old cans you find tossing about the reef flung away by the kanakas—label gone, and nothing to indicate its past contents. The best men in the world would wilt on the beach, and that’s the truth; the beach, that is to say sun and little to do—the sun kills or demoralizes more men than whiskey; to be born to the sun, you must be born in the sun, like Katafa, like Dick, like Le Moan; you must never have worn clothes.
Sometimes a white man is sun proof inside and out, but rarely. Carlin was sun proof on the outside, his skin stood the pelting of the terrible invisible rays; he throve on it; but internally he had gone to pieces.
He had one ambition, whiskey—or rum, or gin, or even samshu, but whiskey for choice.
There was whiskey on the Kermadec, but not for Carlin. Peterson, as sober a man as Rantan, kept it, just as he kept the Viterli rifles in the arms rack, for use in an emergency. It was under lock and key, but Carlin had smelt it out.
Its presence on board was like the presence of an evil genius, invisible, but there and exercising its power; it kept reminding him of Rantan’s words at supper that night, and when he turned in and even in his sleep its work went on; he saw in his dreams the vessel heading for the unknown pearl island towards the golden light of fortune and unlimited whiskey, he was on her deck with Rantan in command and Peterson was not there.
The dream said nothing about Peterson, totally ignored him, and Peterson, on deck at that moment, had no idea that the beachcomber was dreaming of the Kermadec off her course and without her skipper.
Next day in the morning watch, Sru was at the wheel and Rantan, a pipe in his mouth, stood by the weather rail, the sun had just risen shattering the night and spreading gold across the breezed up blue of the swell.
The sunrise came to the Kermadec like the sudden clap of a hot hand: Sru felt it on his back and Rantan on his cheek. From away to windward came the cry of a gull, a gull passed overhead with domed wings circled as if inspecting the schooner and drifted off on the wind. Almost at the same moment, came the cry of the kanaka lookout. “Land!”
Rantan walked forward. Right ahead, rosy above the brimming sea, lay the cloud scarf of Levua.
Still a great way off, facing the blazing east, the island, clear of any trace of morning bank, seemed to float between the blue of sea and sky, remote, more lovely than any dream.
When Rantan turned aft again he found Le Moan standing by Sru at the wheel. Sru was explaining to her how the wheel worked the “steering paddle” in the stern. The Kermadec was close hauled, every sail drawing. Sru was explaining this matter and showing how the least bit closer to the wind would set the sails shivering and take the way off the ship. Le Moan understood. Sea craft was born in her, and used now to the vast sail spaces of the schooner, she felt no fear—the Kermadec was only a canoe after all, of a larger build and different make.
He let her hold the spokes for a moment, governing the wheel with a guiding hand, then at the risk of the schooner being taken aback, he stood aside and the girl had the helm.
The Kermadec for a moment showed no sign that the wheel had changed hands, then, suddenly, a little warning flutter passed through the canvas from the luff of the mainsail, passed and ceased and the sail became hard again. Le Moan had understood, understood instinctively, that ceaseless pressure against the lee bow which tends to push a vessel’s head up into the wind.
For a moment Taori, Karolin, the very presence of Sru were forgotten, the words that Sru had spoken to her only a little while before, “You will soon see Taori, little one, but first you must learn to use the steering paddle.” Everything was forgotten in the first new grip of the power that was in her to hold all those great sail spaces filling, to play such a great game with the wind and the sea.
Aioma had taught her to steer her fishing canoe, but so long ago that she could not remember the first time she had the paddle to herself; but this was different, different as the kiss of a lover from the kiss of a friend—something that reached her soul; it was different as the sight of Taori from the sight of other men, great, thrilling, lifting her above herself, creative.
Utterly ignorant of the mechanism that moved the rudder as a man is ignorant of the mechanism that moves his arm, after the first few minutes of the great new experience she could not do wrong. She knew nothing of the compass, she only knew that she was to keep the ship close hauled as Sru had been keeping her, so close that a fraction nearer the wind would spill the sails. Sru watched her and Rantan, forgetting his pipe, stood with his eyes fixed on her. Both men recognized that the ship was safe for the moment. One might have thought them admiring the picture that she made against the blue sky and the glory of morning, but the interest in their eyes was neither the interest of the roused æsthetic sense, nor of love, nor of passion, nor of seamanship.
As they stood, suddenly, and as though Tragedy had staged the scene for some viewless audience, the head and shoulders of Peterson appeared at the saloon hatch opening.
Rantan, his face mottled with white, stared at Peterson, Sru drawing the back of his hand across his nose as if wiping it, stood on one foot, then on the other, confused, looking like a dog that has been misbehaving itself. Le Moan saw nothing.
Without losing its alertness on the touch of the wheel her mind had gone off for a momentary flight. She saw herself steering the Kermadec towards Karolin, she saw in imagination the distant reef, the gulls and the thrilling blue of the great lagoon beyond the reef opening.
Peterson, without coming further on deck, watched her for a moment without comprehending anything but the fact that the girl had been allowed to take the wheel. Then as Sru took the spokes from her and pushed her forward, the captain of the Kermadec turned on Rantan, but the abuse on his lips was half shrivelled by the face of the mate.
“Don’t you never do a thing like that again,” said Peterson. “Dam’ tomfoolery.” He snorted and went forward, kicked a kanaka out of his way and then stood, his eyes fixed on the distant vision of Levua opal tinted in the blue, blue north.