Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/291

 light of Karolin, heard suddenly the thrashing of canvas as the steersman brought the schooner up into the wind.

Aioma was going to board the ayat. He was shouting directions to Tahuku and the others—they ran to the falls, the boat was lowered, and in a moment he was away, shouting like a boy; scrambling like a monkey when they hitched on to the broad channel plates he gained the deck and stood looking round him.

Aye, that was a place! Bones of dead men picked clean by the birds lay here and there, and a skull polished like a marble rolled and moved and rotated on the planking to the pitch of the hull, the clicking of the lax rudder chain, and the clapping of the deck-house door.

He had brought his fire-stick with him and its little bow, from the deck of the schooner. They watched him as he stood looking about him. Then turning, he darted into the deck-house.

He was there a long time, perhaps ten minutes, and when he came out a puff of smoke came after him. Holding the door open, he looked in till another puff of smoke garnished with sparks, hit him in the face, then having done a little dance on the deck and kicked the skull into the starboard scupper, he dropped into the boat and came back to the schooner, singing.

The boat was hoisted in, the schooner put on her course and the smoking brig dropped far astern, but Aioma, still flushed with his work and victory, heeded nothing.