Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/292

 He sat on the coaming of the saloon skylight singing.

He sang of the bones of the dead men and the skull he had kicked and the ayat he had fired and the cursed papalagi whose work he had destroyed; then, with a great whoop he curled up and went asleep, undreaming that the papalagi might yet have their revenge, and Dick, to whom Aioma and the ship astern flaring horribly in the sunlight were as nothing, watched from the bow the steady growing beacon of Karolin in the sky.

There was Katafa.

His soul flew ahead of the schooner like a bird, flew back and flew forward again calling on the wind, and the wind, nearing, strengthened, so that a little after midday the far treetops of the southern beach came to view and now, faint and far away, the song of the great atoll.

Birds flew to meet them and birds passed them flying towards the land and as the sun began its downward climb to the water, the break began to show away on the port bow and Le Moan, pushing Tahuku, who was at the wheel, aside, prepared to take them in.

For only Le Moan knew the danger of the break when the tide was ebbing as now.

The waters were against them. It seemed the last feeble effort of fate to separate Dick from the being he loved.

The vast lagoon was pouring out like a river, it was past full spate, but the swirl was enough, if the helmsman failed to drive them on the coral.