Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/158

 For a moment it was as though race gazed upon kindred race disowning it, not seeing it, mistaking it for an alien and lower race and from deep in the mind of Dick vague and phantom-like rose trouble.

He did not know that he himself was a white man, blood brother of the man in the boat. He knew nothing, yet he felt trouble. He turned to Aioma.

“Will he die?”

“Ay, most surely will he die,” said the old fellow with a chuckle. “Will the dog-fish not die when he is caught? He who killed the canoes, the children, is it not just that he should die?”

Dick inclined his head without speaking. He turned to where Nanu and the other woman were standing, waiting, terrible, with their dead children still clasped in their arms.

“It is just,” said he, “see to it, Aioma,” and turning without another glance at the boat he walked away, past the shattered canoes, past the half-picked bones, through the sunlight, towards the trees.

Aioma, no longer himself, but something more evil, came towards the boat making little bird-like noises, rubbing his shrivelled hands together, stroking his thighs.

The tide was just at full ebb, the old ledge where the victims of Nanawa were staked out in past times for the sharks to eat was uncovered and only waiting for a victim. It lay halfway between the village and the reef break and in old times one might have known when an execution was to take place by the fins of