Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/55

 to speak to Sru on this matter and had not he been in a mood to answer her, the whole life of Le Moan would have been altered and never again might she have seen Taori.

“What is it,” asked she, glancing across her shoulder at the steersman, “and why do you look at it so?”

“This,” said Sru, indicating the wheel for which he had no word in the native, “moves the steering paddle (e caya madyara) and into that I look to find my way.”

Now when Karolin had sunk beneath the sea rim the conviction had come to Le Moan that never would she see Karolin again; her instinct told her where it lay and, given a canoe, she could have found it even at this great distance, but her knowledge of where it lay was no comfort to her—she felt that the great hand that had seized her would never let her go and that a door had closed forever between this new world and the old where Taori dwelt safe owing to the closing of the door.

She glanced again at the binnacle and then speaking like a person in reverie she said: “Without that I could find my way though the sea were dark and no stars shone, as I have found my way often in the fishing canoes when the land was so far it could not be seen.”

Sru knew what she meant; at Soma in the Paumotus from where he had come the directional instinct, shared more or less by all savages, was especially marked in some of the children, and the deep-sea