Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/298

 “Aripa! aripa! aripa!”

Forgetting his chieftianship, he raced with the others to help to push off the boat bearing Aioma to his work.

Then he stood with Katafa watching. Near them and beside Kanoa stood Le Moan.

They watched the canoe-builder clamber on board like a monkey, they saw him dancing on the deck like a maniac insulting the ropes and spars, then they heard the ship's bell go clang-clang, as he made her talk for the last time.

He vanished down the foc'sle and came out escorted by a cloud of smoke, down the hatch of the saloon from whose skylight presently a blue-grey wreath uprose and circled on the faint breeze.

Then he was on deck again and away in the boat, and the schooner was burning fore and aft.

Wreathing herself in mist that cleared now to show two tall columns of smoke rising and spreading and forming spirals on the wind, red flames like the tongues of hounds licking out of the portholes, flames that ran spirit-like about the old tinder-dry deck. The main boom was burning now, the topping lofts were snapped, flames curling round the masts like climbing snakes, and now, like the rumble of a boiler, came the rumble of the fire as it spread in her, breaking through bulkheads, seizing the cargo and splitting the decks.

The sandalwood was burning and the incense of it spread across the lagoon to the white-robed congregation of the gulls wheeling and giving tongue above the reef; burning and blazing till the decks gave