CHAPTER IV—WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE REEF?
Three weeks’ work had recreated the houses broken by the great waves, and put a top knob to the work of the builders. Nan had been recovered. A boy found him cast up in the sand near the break. A new post for him was cut, and Karolin, no longer godless, was itself again. But Aioma was not happy.
The sea when it had swept the reef had not disturbed the tree trunks felled and partly shaped, or had only altered their position slightly as they lay waiting for the canoe-builders to resume work; but Aioma had lost heart in the business. He had come to the conclusion that the schooner was better than any fleet of canoes, and all his desires were fixed on her.
Yet still something called him to the shaping of the logs, the voice of the Unfinished Job perhaps calling to the true workman, or maybe just the voice of habit—all the same he did not turn to it. He was under the spell of the schooner. Pulled this way and that he was unhappy. It is hard to give up a life’s vocation even at the call of something better, and he would sit sometimes squatting on the sands, his face turned now to the object of his passion, and now towards the trees that talked to him of the half-born canoes.
Meanwhile in his mind there lay side by side and growing daily, a great curiosity and a great ambition.
The curiosity had been born of the battle of the gulls.
“What,” asked he of himself, “has happened to the reef of Marua (Palm Tree)?” He knew Marua, he had been one of the fighters in the great battle of long years ago when the men of the north of Karolin had pursued the men of the south and slain them on Palm Tree beach. He had seen the reef and instinct told him that the invading gulls of three weeks ago had come from there.
They were seeking a new home. Why? What had happened to the reef, or what had driven them from the reef?
Had the great waves of the same day, those three great waves that he still beheld scintillating in his mind, had they destroyed the reef? But how could that be, since they had not destroyed Karolin reef? The whole thing was a mystery and beside the curiosity that it excited, there lay in his mind the great Ambition, to take the schooner into the open sea and sail her there.
The lagoon, great as it was, was too small for him, besides, it was dangerous to the west with shoals and banks.
No, the outer sea was the place for him and there came the rub—Katafa.
Katafa had a horror of the vessel. She would not go on board it and well he knew that Taori would not go any distance from Karolin without Katafa, and he (Aioma) greatly daring, wished to go a long way, even as far as Marua, to see what had happened to the reef.
There you have the whole tangle and you can see how the curiosity and the ambition had grown together whilst lying side by side in his mind.
There was also a scheme.
Katafa would not object to Taori going out in the schooner a little way, and Taori would not mind leaving Katafa for a little time. And, thought the cunning Aioma, once we are out beyond there I will tell him what is in my mind about the gulls and the reef and he will want to go and see; it is not far and the colour of the current will lead us as it always has led the canoes, and the light of Karolin in the sky (ayamasla) will lead us back; besides, I will take with me Le Moan, who can find her way without eyes. Cooking this scheme in his mind he said nothing for some days till one evening, getting Taori and Katafa alone with him, he broached the idea of taking the ayat out a little way and to his surprise there was no resistance to it on the part of Katafa.
She had seen Dick’s face light up at the suggestion. His trouble on account of the lost toys had affected her as though the loss had been her own, and she would say no word to mar this new pleasure, she would even overcome her hatred of the schooner and go with him, if he asked her.
But he did not ask her, he knew her dislike of the ship and the idea of taking her along never occurred to him.
“Then,” said Aioma, “to-morrow I will get all things ready with water and fruit, for it is a saying of Karolin that no canoe should ever pass the reef without its drinking nuts lashed to the gratings—one never knows.”
“Aie,” said Katafa. Then she checked herself and turned away whilst Dick and the old man finished their talk.
They had several names for the sea in Karolin, names to suit its moods in storm and calm; one of these names spoke volumes of past history, history of sufferings endured by canoe men through the ages—The Great Thirst.
The sea to the people of Karolin was not an individual, but almost a multitude; the sea of calm, the sea of storm, the sea that canoe men encountered when blown off shore with the last drinking nut gone—The Great Thirst.
Katafa had known of it all her life. Once she had nearly sailed into it, and the words of Aioma about the water for the Kermadec recalled it to her. She shivered, and as the others talked, she scarcely heard their voices, contemplating this new terror which had arisen above her horizon.
But she said nothing, neither that night nor the next day when the casks were being brought on shore to be filled, when the nuts and pandanus fruit were being brought down to the boat by the women, many of them wives of Poni and the others of the crew.
Aioma had told Poni about the coming expedition and the men of the schooner were not only willing to take their places on board again, but eager. Maybe they were tired for a moment of their wives, or just craving for something new—however that may be, they went aboard that night to make preparations for a start on the morrow, leaving their wives on the beach to look after themselves—all but Kanoa.
Kanoa did not go on board. He had had enough experience of that schooner, he did not want to set foot on her again; besides, he wanted to be left behind for his courage was growing and with it the determination to have it out with Le Moan.
So when the others were putting off, Kanoa was not with them. He had gone off along the beach towards the great trees, determining to hide till the schooner was beyond the reef. She was due to go out at dawn or a little later with the ebb tide and he would hide and watching till her topmasts were visible beyond the coral he would come back to the village to find Le Moan.
He would pretend that he had gone fishing on the reef and so had lost the schooner. As he sat down by the great logs of the canoe-builders and watched the stars looking out above the foam, he saw himself returning to the village, the sun in his face, the hateful vessel gone and Le Moan waiting for him.
Kanoa thought in pictures. Pictures suggested to him pictures. He did not know, neither did he picture the fact that Aioma, having decided to take Le Moan with him as a sort of navigating instrument, the girl was at that moment on board of the schooner, asleep, waiting for the dawn, dreaming, if she dreamed at all, of Taori.