Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/206



HREE weeks' work had recreated the houses broken by the great waves, and put a top knob to the work of the builders. Nan had been recovered. A boy found him cast up in the sand near the break. A new post for him was cut, and Karolin, no longer godless, was itself again. But Aioma was not happy.

The sea when it had swept the reef had not disturbed the tree trunks felled and partly shaped, or had only altered their position slightly as they lay waiting for the canoe-builders to resume work; but Aioma had lost heart in the business. He had come to the conclusion that the schooner was better than any fleet of canoes, and all his desires were fixed on her.

Yet still something called him to the shaping of the logs, the voice of the Unfinished Job perhaps calling to the true workman, or maybe just the voice of habit—all the same he did not turn to it. He was under the spell of the schooner. Pulled this way and that he was unhappy. It is hard to give up a life's vocation even at the call of something better, and he would sit sometimes squatting on the sands, his face turned now to the object of his passion, and now towards the trees that talked to him of the half-born canoes.