Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/293

 Now they were in the grip of it, the schooner bucking like a restive horse, now steady, now making frantic efforts to turn and dash out to sea again—Aioma in the bow crying directions, Le Moan heeding him as little as she heeded the crying of the gulls.

Now they had stolen between the piers. The break on either side of them seemed immensely broad and the grand sweep of the outgoing water lit by the westering sun showed with scarcely a ripple to where it boiled against the piers: gulls in flight above it showed as in a mirror, yet it was flowing at a six-knot clip.

The schooner with every sail drawing seemed not to move, yet she moved, turning the mirror to a feather of foam at her cut water and a river of beaten gold in her wake. The piers dropped astern, the current slackened, the lagoon was conquered and lay before them a blaze of light from the beach sands to its northern viewless barrier.

Katafa was sleeping. She who slept scarcely at all by night and whose eyes by day were always fixed towards the sea, was sleeping when the voice of Kanoa roused her:

“They come, Katafa, they come!”

Raising herself on one hand, she saw the sunset light through the trees and the form of Kanoa making off again to the beach his voice drifting back to her as he ran:

“They come, Katafa, they come!”

Then where the whole village was waiting, she found