Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/145

 her knee, poisoned with argora. A scratch from it would be sufficient to destroy life almost instantaneously, and as she sat brooding and waiting, her eyes saw neither the deck nor the starlight, but the vision of a sunlit beach and a form, Taori. Taori for whom she would have destroyed the world.

The sea spoke on the great reef loud to windward, low to leeward; you could hear within the long rumble and roar of the nearby breakers the diminuendo of the rollers that smoked beneath the stars, ringing with a forty-mile mist the placid ocean of the lagoon.

The moon was rising. She could see the gleam of its light on the binnacle where the Godling lived that had always pointed away from Karolin, on the port rail and on the brass-work of the skylight. Then, roused by a sound soft as the sifting of leaves on a lawn, she turned and behind her the deck was crowded.

The crew had come on deck led by Kanoa, and the stern of the schooner swinging towards the break with the tide, the level light of the moon was on their faces.