“Listen!” said the wind.
 
From her place amidst the trees where Le Moan had settled herself like a hare in its forme she heard the silky whisper of the sands and the voice of the beach and the wind in the leaves above bidding her to listen.
 
Far-away voices came from the mammee apple where the men of the schooner¹ and their wives were making merry, and now and then, the faintest thing in the world of sound, a click and creak from Nan on his post above the house where Taori lay in the arms of Katafa.
 
To Le Moan all that was nothing. She had banded death in exchange for Taori, all her interest in life, all her desires. She had not even the desire to destroy herself. The fire that had been her life burned low and smouldered; it would never blaze again.
 
“Listen!” said the wind.
 
Something moved amidst the trees—it was Kanoa: Kanoa, his heart beating against his ribs², his hands outstretched touching³ the tree boles.
 
She saw him now as he came towards her like a phantom⁴ from the star-showered night, and she knew why he came, nor did she move as he dropped on his knees beside her—all that was nothing now to Le Moan.
 
Since the night when he had saved her from Rantan, he had been closer to her than the other men of the schooner, but still only a figure, almost an abstraction.
 
To-night, now, he was a little more than that, as a dog might be to a lonely person, and as he poured out his heart in whispers she listened without replying, let him put his arm around her and take her lips; all that was nothing now to her whose heart would never quicken again.
 
The wind died, day broke, and the wind of morning blew.
 
Joy and the sun leapt on Karolin. Joy for Katafa who came from the house to look at a world renewed, for the women whose husbands had returned, for the men, for the children. Joy for Kanoa, his soul shouting in him, “She is mine, she is mine,” and for Aioma, the lust⁵ of revenge and destruction alive and dancing in his heart.
 
He had killed the green ship; this morning he would kill the schooner; the cursed ayat, that he had yet loved so dearly only a week ago, was doomed⁶ to die.
 
He hated it now with an entirely⁷ new and delicious brand of hatred⁸ and if he could have staked it out on the reef for the sharks to devour⁹, so would he have done.
 
It had given him the scare of his life, it had all but snapped him away from Karolin, it had caused ancestral voices to rise cursing him for his folly¹⁰ and treachery towards his race; it had brought up visions of the Spanish ship, the brutal¹¹ whale men, Carlin, Rantan, and the whole tribe of the papalagi, it was theirs and it had got to die.
 
Besides, it was going to give him the chance to set fire to things. He was still licking his chops over the firing of the green ship and the joy of incendiarism was about to be recaptured.
 
It was the last blaze up of youth in him. He called the village together and explained matters.
 
The ayat was accursed. His father, Amatu, had explained it all in a dream, commanding him, Aioma, to attend to this matter. The thing had to burn; if it did not burn worse would befall Karolin.
 
“Burn, burn, aripa, aripa!” cried the boys.
 
“Aripa!” shrieked¹² the women, the men took tongue and the cry went up like the crackle of flame.
 
Katafa listened, loathing¹³ the schooner. The cry went up from her heart.
 
Dick stood dumb. Dumb as a man hesitating before cutting away the very last strand¹⁵ connecting him with his past. Dumb as a man about to renounce¹⁶ his race, though of his race and of the civilized^{17............}