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 ship and the idea of taking her along never occurred to him.

“Then,” said Aioma, “to-morrow I will get all things ready with water and fruit, for it is a saying of Karolin that no canoe should ever pass the reef without its drinking nuts lashed to the gratings—one never knows.”

“Aie,” said Katafa. Then she checked herself and turned away whilst Dick and the old man finished their talk.

They had several names for the sea in Karolin, names to suit its moods in storm and calm; one of these names spoke volumes of past history, history of sufferings endured by canoe men through the ages—The Great Thirst.

The sea to the people of Karolin was not an individual, but almost a multitude; the sea of calm, the sea of storm, the sea that canoe men encountered when blown off shore with the last drinking nut gone—The Great Thirst.

Katafa had known of it all her life. Once she had nearly sailed into it, and the words of Aioma about the water for the Kermadec recalled it to her. She shivered, and as the others talked, she scarcely heard their voices, contemplating this new terror which had arisen above her horizon.

But she said nothing, neither that night nor the next day when the casks were being brought on shore to be filled, when the nuts and pandanus fruit were being