Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/253

 Up on deck Poni at the wheel turned to the canoe-builder.

“And what now, Aioma,” said Poni, “since Le Moan knows not where to go, where go we?” As he spoke the mainsail trembled, rippled, and flattened again.

The canoe-builder turned aft. The breezed-up blue, beyond a certain point, lay in meadows and a far glitter spoke of a great space where there was no wind.

“The wind is losing its feathers,” said Poni with a backward glance in the direction towards which the other was looking.

As he spoke the mainsail trembled again as though a shudder were running up it and the boom shifted to the cordy creak of the topping lifts.

Yes, the wind was losing its feathers, dying, jaded, exhausted; again the mainsail flattened, shivered and filled only to flatten again, the wabble of the bow wash began to die out and the schooner to lose steerage way.

The breath of Le Juan was failing and Aioma who had cursed it saw now the calm spreading towards them, passing them, taking the southern sea.

Poni left the wheel.

There was nothing to steer. A ship is only a ship when she is moving, and the schooner, now a hulk on the lift of the swell, lay with a gentle roll on the glassy water—drawing vague figures upon the sky with her trucks, complaining with the voice of block and cordage whilst the canoe-builder standing with his eyes on the north, felt the calm: felt it with a sixth sense gained from close on a century of weather influence;