Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/258

 or the power of the swallow to find its southern nest, told her just where Karolin lay; away on the starboard beam to the north, now dead aft as the schooner turned to some gentle swirl of the current, now a bit to port, now back again to starboard.

She could see the figures of Taori and Aioma in the starlight and she could hear the voices of Poni and the others from the foc’sle, the creak of the timbers and the creak of the main boom as it moved to the rocking of the swell. She too had not eaten that day.

She had done her work and she had received her reward. With his body in her arms and her lips on his neck, she had drunk him as a creature dying of thirst might drink long delicious draughts from a poisoned well; for he had clung to her not in the passion of love, but of misery, and he had let her hold him as a comforter not as a lover, and she knew that till the stars fell dead and the sun ceased to shine that never would he be closer to her than that.

This knowledge had come to her from the very contact with his body, from the clasp of his arms about her neck. He had told her unconsciously and without speech more than he could have ever have told her in words. He was Katafa’s.

He was for ever out of her reach, sure and certain instinct told her that, yet he was near her and she could see him—they were together.

Only a little before sundown Aioma had said to her, “Le Moan, maybe since the wind has gone the spell of Uta Matu has ceased to work. Shut your