Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/252

 His eyes turned to Le Moan and passed her, falling on Poni at the wheel, and the sea beyond.

Aioma had told him that he was taking Le Moan as a pathfinder, but Dick had troubled little about that, scarcely believing in it. He had trusted to the current and the light of Karolin as a guide. They were gone, but it was the words of Aioma that removed the last vestige of hope.

He trusted Aioma in all sea matters and when Aioma said that they were lost, they were lost indeed. Palm Tree vanished, Karolin gone, nothing but the sea, the trackless hopeless sea and the words of Aioma!

Urged by a blind instinct to get away from the sight of that sea, that sky, that pitiless sun, he left the deck and came down the steps to the saloon where he stood, a strange figure, almost nude, against the commonplace surroundings; the table, the chairs, the bunks with their still disordered bedding, the mirror let into the forward bulkhead, a mirror so old and dim and spotted that it scarcely cast a reflection.

He looked about him for a moment, moved towards the bunk where Carlin had once slept, and, sitting down on the edge of it, leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, his head bowed; just as his father had sat long, long years ago when Emmeline had vanished into the woods to return bearing a child in her arms—bearing him, Taori.

Just as his father had sat all astray, crushed, helpless and lost, so he sat now, and for the same reason.