Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/112

 that something of which they did not know the name (but which was civilization), was out there beyond the sea line, something that, octopus-like, would at times thrust out a feeler in the form of a ship, an ayat destructive and, if possible, to be destroyed.

Ayat was the name given by Karolin to the great burgomaster gulls that were to the small gulls what schooners are to canoes, and so anything in the form of a ship was an ayat, that is to say, a thing carrying with it all the propensities of a robber and a murderer; for the great gulls would rob the lesser gulls of their food and devour their chicks and fight and darken the sunshine of the reef with their wings.

The comparison was not a compliment to the Pacific traders or their ships or the civilization that had sent them forth to prey on the world, but it was horribly apposite.

And yet the little ayats in the shadow of the house had for Aioma an attraction beyond words. They were as fascinating as sin. This old child after a hard day’s work would sometimes dream of them in his sleep; dream that he was helping to sail them on the big rock pool, as he sometimes did in reality. The frigate, the full-rigged ship, the schooner and the whale man, all had cruised in the rock pool which seemed constructed by nature as a model testing tank; indeed the first great public act of Dick as ruler of the Karolinites had been a full review of this navy on the day after he had fetched Aioma from the southern beach. Aioma, fascinated by the sight of the schooner