the schooner had two boats, the four-oar and a smaller one black painted, battered by rough usage, but still serviceable. later that day aioma brought both boats on to the beach for an overhaul.
the remains of sru and his companions had been dragged by the women to the outer coral and cast at low-tide mark for the sea to dispose of them. nothing spoke of the tragedy but the remains of the canoes, the planking of the broken dinghy and the ship swinging idly at her moorings.
it was late afternoon and the crew, released from their wives for a moment, sat round whilst aioma worked. le moan sat close to him but apart from the others, amongst whom was kanoa.
the eyes of kanoa might wander here or there, towards the canoe-builder, towards the lagoon, towards the schooner, but they always returned to le moan, who sat unconscious of his gaze listening to the talk of the old man and the answering words of poni, whose dialect was the closest to that of karolin.
aioma had taken le moan off to the schooner that afternoon when he went to fetch the second boat.
it was not really the boat he wanted. his object was to get the girl on board alone with himself so that she might teach him the secret of the tiller and other things so that he might teach taori. he was not jealous of taori on land, he had supported him in every way as ruler, but in sea matters and in the mysteries of construction it was just a little hard that he, aioma, should be less in knowledge than taori or be condemned to learn with him from the mouth of a girl.
so, not stealing a march on taori, but at least not awakening him, as the whole village slept in the heat of early afternoon, aioma had pushed off with the girl and kanoa, who, being unmarried, was drowsing close under the shelter of a tree.
leaving kanoa to keep the boat they had boarded the schooner alone.
here the girl had explained the mystery of the wheel, the binnacle, in which dwelt a spirit prisoned there by the white men, the winch for getting up the anchor chain. she told him she alone had been able to steer the schooner and she showed him the compass card whose spear head always pointed in one direction no matter how the ship lay.
she did not know how it told the white men where to go, but she thought it must be friendly to karolin as it had always pointed away from it. if they had obeyed it, they would not have been killed nor the children of nanu and ona, nor would nanti have been wounded (the boy first shot by carlin and whom taori had carried off on his back amongst the trees).
“what of that,” said aioma, “children are children, and nanti will take no hurt. he is already running about and the hole in his thigh will fill up— what of all that, beside the ayat?” yet still his respect for the thing in the binnacle increased, and he followed with his eyes the pointing of the spear head. why, it was pointing in the direction in which marua (palm tree) lay! marua, the island of the bad men, who some day—some day would raid karolin, according to taori.
he put this matter by in his mind to mature, and then he turned to the last unexplained mystery, the rifle leaning against the saloon skylight just as dick had left it. she could explain this, too. she had seen peterson using a rifle for shooting at bottles and her keen eyes had followed everything from the taking of the cartridge from the box to its insertion in the breech, to the act of firing and extraction.
she went to the galley where carlin had placed the spare ammunition to be handy, and returned with a half full box of cartridges, and, obeying direction, aioma did everything that peterson had done. the recoil bruised his shoulder and the noise nearly deafened him, but he was unhurt, neither was the village alarmed owing to the distance, a few birds rose on the reef and that was all. but it was great. the noise delighted him and the smell of the powder. then leaving the rifle on deck they returned to the beach towing the second boat.
he was talking now as he worked, telling poni and the others that life on karolin was not going to be all beer and skittles for them, that as they had joined the tribe and taken wives they would have to work; to work in the paraka patches and in the fishing and to help man the schooner. “for,” said aioma, “there are things to be done beyond the reef, away over there,” said he straightening himself for a moment and wiping his brow and pointing north, “where lies marua, an island of tall trees, and evil men who may yet come in their canoes—no matter. it is not a question for you or for me, but for taori.”
“what you set us to do we will do,” said poni. “we are not beach crabs, but men, aioma. what say you, kanoa?”
kanoa laughed and glanced at le moan and then away over the lagoon.
“i will work in the paraka patches and at the fishing,” said he, “but the work i would like best would be the work of measuring myself against those evil men you speak of, aioma—that is the work for a man.”
as he spoke the reef trembled and the air shook to a long roll of thunder, an infinite, subdued, volume of sound heart-shaking because its source seemed not in the air above them, but in the earth beneath them and the sea that washed the reef.
the wind had died out at noon, the outer sea was calm and the lagoon, mirror-bright, was making three inch waves on the sand; the tide was at half flood.
aioma looked about him, the others had risen to their feet and poni, leaving them, had run on to a higher bit of ground and was looking over the outer sea.
through the windless air came the outcrying of gulls disturbed and then in the silence following the great sound that had died away, came another silence. the voice of the rollers on the outer beach had almost ceased.
“the sea is going out,” cried poni, “she is leaving us, she is dying—she has ceased to speak!”
as his voice reached them, they saw the water at the break swirling to an outgoing tide: an outgoing tide at half flood!
led by aioma they reached the higher ground, stood and gazed at the sea. the vast blue sea glittering without a touch of wind showed like a thing astray and disturbed. its rhythm had ceased, swell met counter swell, and the karaka rock spoke in foam; the wet coral showed the fall of the receding tide, and away to eastward white caps on the flawless blue marked the run of the north-flowing current checked for a moment in its course.
the village, disturbed by the vast rumour from the heart of things and answering to the call of poni, came crowding out from the trees—the women had caught up their children, the boys and young men had seized spears and bows. they glanced to right and left; a woman cried out; then dead silence fell on them. every eye was fixed on aioma.
he was standing on a higher piece of coral, mute, motionless, as if carved from rock, his eyes fixed on the troubled waters. taori might be their chief, but the wisdom of aioma they knew of old, and seeing him undisturbed, they remained calm, waiting.
the voice of poni broke the silence:
“she is coming back.”
the flood was returning, the swirl at the break had ceased and a wave broke on the coral of the outer beach; the line of white caps died away, the karaka rock ceased to spout, moment by moment the sea resumed her lost rhythm as breaker on breaker came in filling the air again with the old accustomed sound.
a great sigh went up from the people. all was over.
yet aioma did not move.
dick, who had followed with the others, stood beside katafa. he noticed that the schooner was swinging back to her old position, the incoming tide setting her again bow to the break, that the sea had regained its accustomed appearance, and that the lagoon was filling. all was right again.
yet aioma did not move. he stood with his eyes fixed to the far north. then, suddenly, he turned and sprang from the rock.
“to the trees—to the trees!” he was no longer a man, he was a whirlwind, he rushed on the people with arms outspread, and, turning, they broke and ran.
“to the trees—to the trees!”
a hundred voices caught up the cry, the groves echoed it in a flash, the beach and coral stood empty, the people had taken to the trees; some to the near trees, some racing along the reef sought the great trees of the canoe-builders.
it was not climbing, as we know it. these people, like the people of tahiti, could literally walk up a tree, bodies bent, hands clinging to the trunk and feet clutching at the bark.
katafa could climb like this; dick, less expert but a good climber, followed her, making her go first, seizing before he left the ground a child that held on to his neck. the child was laughing.
fifty feet above the ground they clung and looked.
from east to west across the sea stretched a line of light, lovely and strange and infinite in length, swift moving, changing in brilliancy yet ever brilliant. ever advancing, whilst now from tree top to tree top came the cry, shrill on the windless air:
“amiana—amiana!—the wave—the wave!”
it met the karaka rock and a great white ghost of foam rose towards the sun. a few seconds later came the boom of the impact followed by the clanging of the reef gulls rising in clouds and spirals; it passed the rock, re-forming, forward sweeping, bearing straight for the reef; a mound of sea towards which the shore waters rushed out as it checked, curved, paled and burst in thunder on the reef, sweeping houses to ruin and flooding into the lagoon.
the trees held though the foam dashed thirty feet up their trunks. aioma unterrified, with one thought only, the schooner, could see from his aerie that she was safe. broken by the reef the great wave had not harmed her. but now and again came the cry caught from tree top to tree top.
“amiana—amiana! the wave—the wave!”
the duplicate, the glittering brother of the first long line of light, was moving as swiftly towards them across the sea. again the karaka spouted and the gulls clanged out, again the great green hill of water sucked the shore sea to it, curved, crested and broke to the roar of miles and miles of reef.
the bones of the houses broken by the first great comber could be heard washing amidst the tree roots below and from the canoe-builders’ grove came the crash of a great tree, a matamata, less secure a refuge than the slender-stemmed coconuts. it had fallen lagoonward and the people on it, unkilled, were climbing along it back to shore when yet again came the cry:
“amiana—amiana! the wave—the wave!”
it was the third great wave, bright like a far glittering bar of crystal, scintillating with speed, sweeping through distance as the others had swept towards the reef and lagoon of karolin.
but now, after the first outcry, the people in the treetops no longer awaited the coming of the danger in silence.
their spirit suddenly broke. the sight of this third dazzling apparition was too much. what had they done to the sea that she should do this thing to them? their houses were gone, the trees were beginning to go; the trees would be destroyed and the reef itself would follow them, for what could withstand the enmity of the sea or the night that sent these vast glittering waves unleashed across her, one following on another—with how many more yet to come!
so as the third great wave drew back in silence for its blow against the land, the voice of karolin was heard, a lamentable voice against the crying of the gulls; children and women and youths and some of the newcome kanakas joined in the cry, but not le moan or katafa, nor dick. not aioma, who, sure of his beloved schooner, found now time and words to comfort his weaker brethren when the comber crashing in spindrift and thunder left the trees still unbroken and a silence through which his voice could be heard.
he called them names that cannot be repeated, but which heartened them up, then he told them that the worst was over and to look at the sea.
yes, the worst was over. no fourth brilliant line of light showed like the sword blade of destruction sweeping over the blue, only a greater heave of the swell lifting the inshore green into breakers, horses of the sea resuming their eternal charge against the long line of the reef.
