Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/278

 He was going to die. He was dying. His very strength was killing him.

You sometimes find that—find that the power of a powerful man can be turned in against itself by grief or by disaster or disease.

He was going to die, as Aioma said, and Le Moan knew it.

He was dying because Katafa had been cut away from him.

The sound of the bow-wash and the sound of the sea as it washed past the counter, and the creak of rope and spar, kept saying all this.

“Taori is dying because Katafa is no more with him—no more with him....”

Meanwhile the island grew.

And now Aioma, cheered by the sight of this bit of land, began talking to Poni in a high-pitched voice. But Le Moan did not hear or heed what he said.

So, Taori was going to die. And it was for this that she had taken him away from Katafa. She had taken him away to have him to herself and he was turning into a dead man. To save him from death she had given herself up to Peterson, to save him from death she had killed Carlin and risked being killed by Rantan, and yet he was going to die.

She could hear now the faint and far-away breathing of the surf on the reef ahead mixed with the words of Aioma to Poni; and now harsh and complaining and sudden and near came the call of a gull; a land gull, flying as if racing them.