The stars faded, the east grew crimson1 and the sun arose to show Levua gone; a sky without cloud, a sea without trace of sail or gull2.
Le Moan, crouching3 in the bow with the risen sun hot on her left shoulder, saw the long levels of the marching swell4 as they came and passed, the Kermadec bowing to them; saw the distant southern sea line and beyond it the road to Karolin.
With her eyes shut and as the needle of the compass finds the north magnetic pole, she could have pointed5 to where Karolin lay; and as she gazed across the fields of the breeze-blown swell no trace of cloud troubled her mind, all was bright ahead. Sru had made it clear to her that no hurt would come to Taori, and with Peterson, had gone any last lingering doubt that may have been in her mind. She trusted Sru and she trusted Rantan, who had spoken kindly7 to her, Carlin, and the kanaka crew; of Peterson, the man who had terrified her first and the only trustable man on that ship, she had always had her doubts, begotten8 by that first impression, by his beard, his gruff voice and what Sru had said about Peterson and how he would “swallow all”—that is to say the pearls of Karolin; those mysterious pearls that the white men treasured and of which the charm hidden behind her ear had spoken to Sru.
She had always worn it as a protection and she had not the least doubt that it had spoken to Sru, just as a person might speak, and told him of those other pearls which she had often seen and played with when oysters9 were cast to rot on the beach for the sake of their shells. She had not the least doubt that to the talisman10 behind her ear was due this happy return and the elimination11 of Peterson. Was she wrong?
As she crouched12, the back draught13 from the head sails fanning her hair, the ship and her crew, the sea and its waves, all vanished, dissolved matter from which grew as by some process of recrystallization the beach of Karolin. The long south beach where the sand was whispering in the wind, the hot south beach where the sun-stricken palms lifted their fronds14 to the brassy sky of noon and the tender skies of dawn and evening, the beach above which the stars stood at night all turning with the turning dome15 of sky.
She saw a canoe paddling ashore16 and the canoe man now on the beach, his eyes crinkled against the sun—eyes coloured like the sea when the grey of the squall mixes with its blue. The sun was on his red-gold hair and he trod the sands lightly, not as the kanaka walks and moves; one might have fancied little wings upon his feet.
His naked body against the blazing lagoon17 showed like a flame of gold against a flame of blue. It was Taori. Taori as she had seen him first, on that day when he had come to bid Aioma to the canoe building.
It was as if Fate on that day had suddenly stripped away a veil showing her the one thing to be desired, the only thing that would ever matter to her in this life or the next.
As she leaned, the breeze in her hair and her mind like a bird fleeting18 far ahead into the distance, flying fish like silver shaftless arrow-heads passed and flittered into the blue water, and now a turtle floating asleep and disturbed by the warble of the bow wash and the creak of the onrushing schooner19, sank quietly fathoms20 deep leaving only a few bubbles on the swell.
Carlin had come on deck. Rantan had said not a word about the broken open cupboard or the whiskey; the ship was cleared of drink and that was enough for him; when he came on deck a few minutes after the other, he found the beachcomber leaning on the after rail.
A shark was hanging in the wake of the schooner. A deep-sea ship does not sail alone. She gives company and shelter to all sorts of fish from the remora that hangs on for a whole voyage, to the bonito that follows her maybe for a week. In front of the shark, moving and glittering like spoon bait, a pilot fish showed in flashes of blue and gold.
Carlin turned from contemplation of these things to find Rantan at his side.
On going below for a wash after his night on deck, Carlin had found the other at breakfast. Neither man had spoken of the events of the night before, nor did they now.
“Following us steady, isn’t he?” said Carlin, turning again to contemplate21 the monster in the wake—“don’t seem to be swimming either and he’s going all of eight knots. What’s he after, following us like that?”
“Haven’t you ever seen a shark before?” asked Rantan.
“Yes, and I’ve never seen good of them following a ship,” replied Carlin, “and I’m not set on seeing them, ’specially now.”
“Why now?” asked the mate.
But Carlin shied from the subject that was in both their minds.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said he, “I was thinking of the traverse in front of us.... Say, now we’re set and sailing for it, are you sure of hitting that island?”
“Sure,” said the mate.
“Then you’re better at the navigating22 job than you pretended to be,” said Carlin. “What I like about you is the way you keep things hid.”
“I’ve kept nothing hid,” replied the other. “I’m crazy bad on the navigation, but I’ve got a navigator on board that’ll take us there same as a bullet to a target.”
“Sru?”
“Sru nothing—the kanaka girl, she’s a Marayara. Ever heard of them? You get them among the kanakas; every kanaka has a pretty good sense of direction, but a Marayara, take him away from his island and he’ll home back like a pigeon if he has a canoe and can paddle long enough. That island we took the girl from is the pearl island. Born and bred there she was, and it’s her centre of everything. Sru got it all out of her and about the pearls and fixed23 up with her to take us back. Don’t know what he’s promised her, I reckon a few beads24 is all she wants and all she’ll get, but that’s how it lies: we’ve only got to push along due south by the compass and she’ll correct us, leeway or set of current or any tomfool tricks of the needle don’t matter to her. She never bothers about the compass, she sees where she wants to go stra............