Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/183

 vast tree-trunks over which they had been labouring for long weeks when here to their hands lay something better than any fleet of canoes? If Taori wished to attack those men on the northern island, why not attack with the schooner, a whole fleet in one piece, so to speak?

As he stood pondering over this new idea, Dick, who had awakened early, came towards him from the trees accompanied by Katafa.

“Taori,” said the canoe-builder, “we will go to her (the schooner) you and I; she is ours and I want no other hand to touch her or foot to rest on her till we alone have been with her for a space. Help me.” He laid his hand in the gunnels of the boat as he spoke and Dick, as eager as the other, calling to Katafa to help them, went to the opposite side; between them they got her afloat and tumbled in.

Aioma had learned to handle an oar in the dinghy; the heavy ash sweep was nothing to him and as the boat made across the glitter of the lagoon, Katafa, her feet washed by the little waves on the sand, stood watching them.

Dick had not asked her to accompany him. It was as though the schooner had come between them as a rival—a thing, for the moment, more desirable than her.

She was feeling now what she had felt before only more vaguely. She had always distrusted the little ships, those models born of the pocket knife and ingenuity of Kearney, those hints of an outside world, a