Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/86

 ning, the trees rightfully belonged to all. The billets already cut and stored in go-downs were rafted across the lagoon in fragrant heaps to the Kermadec and shot on board from hand to hand, piled on deck and then stowed in the hold, a slow business watched by Le Moan with uncomprehending eyes. She knew nothing of trade. She only knew what Sru had promised her, that soon, very soon, the ship would turn and go south to find Karolin once again. She believed him because he spoke the truth and she had an instinct for the truth keen as her instinct for direction, so she waited and watched whilst the cargo came leisurely and day by day and week by week, the cargo bound for nowhere, never to be sold, never to be turned into incense, beads, fancy boxes and cabinets; the cargo only submitted to by the powers that had taken command of the Kermadec and her captain, because until the cargo was on board, the ship would not take on her water and her sea-going stores in the shape of bananas and taro.

Down through the paths where the great tree ferns grew on either side and the artu and Jack-fruit trees cast their shadows, came the men of Levua, naked, like polished mahogany, and bearing the white perfumed billets of sandalwood; as they rafted them across the diamond-clear emerald-green water to where the Kermadec stood in the sapphire blue of twelve fathoms their songs came and went on the wind, the singers unconscious that all the business of that beach was as futile as the labour of ants or the move-