Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/56

 canoes in those waters where the currents run in an unaccountable manner and where the trade winds are not, depended on the instinct of the steersman.

He bade her close her eyes and turn and turn. “Where now lies the land we have left?” asked Sru. Without opening her eyes and not knowing east from west or north from south, she pointed aft almost dead south.

Sru laughed. She was right, the mysterious compass in her brain that worked without error or deviation would have pointed to Karolin, though a thousand miles away; then as he spun the wheel having let the Kermadec a point or two off her course, Le Moan went forward and he forgot her, but he did not forget what she had told him. It remained in his tenacious mind like a pebble in molasses, hidden, but there till three days later when towards evening, the kanakas were eating their supper on deck, Sru was brought face to face and for the first time in his life with a great idea, an idea that included tobacco not by the stick, but in cases, rum in casks, women, barlow knives, chalk pipes and patent leather boots, also canned salmon and seidlitz powders.

Sru, an old pearler, had been in the last of the pearling at Soma before the banks gave out. He knew the value of pearls.