Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/36

 the current, weed alive with sea creatures, tiny crabs, ribbon fish and starry sea-growths brilliant with colour.

Then he put back. But an hour’s paddling did not raise the reef; the current was just sufficient to turn the nose of the canoe and he was moving in that fatal circle in which all blind things and things without sense of direction move.

It was noon and the position of the sun gave him no help; sunset or starlight would have put him all right but he had not to wait for these. Then away off beyond a great patch of floating kelp and on his port bow he suddenly saw a dark spot in the sea dazzle. It was a canoe.

Le Moan, as fearless as himself and with a far greater knowledge of these waters, had been fishing along the bank that ran like a spar from the southern beach straight out, shoaling the lagoon water to four fathoms and at some places three. The Karaka bank it was called, and in great storms the lagoon waves broke on it and it showed like a pillow of snow. In ordinary weather nothing marked it but a slight change of colour in the water indicating want of depth.

Away beyond the spur of the Karaka bank, Le Moan saw a canoe adrift and put towards it, guessing from its position and the fact that the paddle was not at work that it was in the grip of the central current.

As she drew near she saw that the canoe man was Taori. She hailed him and he told her that he had lost direction, then, telling him to follow, she put her