the island grew.
poni at the wheel, his eyes wrinkled against the sun, steered; aioma beside him, le moan near aioma and dick forward near the galley. dick had taken his seat on the deck in a patch of shadow and now he was leaning on his side supporting himself with his elbow. the sight of this island that was not karolin had completed the business for dick.
for four days he had scarcely touched food and for four days le moan had watched him falling away from himself. it was like watching a tree wither.
there was a vine on karolin that would sometimes take a tree in its embrace just as ivy does, grow up it and round it and cling without doing the tree any injury; but if the vine were cut away from the tree, the tree would die.
it seemed to le moan that taori was like the tree and katafa the vine.
she was right.
seldom enough, yet every now and then you find in this wilderness of a world, amidst the thorns of hate and the poison berries of passion and the dung of beasts and the toadstools of conjugal love, a passion pure and unselfish like the love of katafa and taori. who moreover, above most other mortals, stood apart in a world there was no room for little things—where the sky was their roof and the ocean their floor and storm and war and cataclysm, halcyon weather, and the blaze of a tropic sun their environment, where the love that bound them together had, woven into it—after the fashion of the rope of rantan—their past.
the thousand little and great and beautiful and terrific things that made up their past, all these were woven into the passion that bound them together.
to cut this bond, to separate them forcibly one from the other, was death.
in hot climates, in the tropics where the convolvulus grows so rapidly that the eye can all but see it grow, people can die quickly of love. death grows when released with the fountain speed of the rocketing datura and the disruptive fury of corruption.
dick cut away from katafa was going to die. it was not only the cutting away, but the manner of it, that made his case hopeless.
not only was he cut away from katafa, but he was also divorced from his environment. his universe had consisted of palm tree and karolin, the sea that held them, the sky above them: katafa—nothing more.
then palm tree had vanished and karolin had been taken from him and nothing was left but the great vacant world of the sea, that and the grief for the loss of katafa.
he was going to die. he was dying. his very strength was killing him.
you sometimes find that—find that the power of a powerful man can be turned in against itself by grief or by disaster or disease.
he was going to die, as aioma said, and le moan knew it.
he was dying because katafa had been cut away from him.
the sound of the bow-wash and the sound of the sea as it washed past the counter, and the creak of rope and spar, kept saying all this.
“taori is dying because katafa is no more with him—no more with him....”
meanwhile the island grew.
and now aioma, cheered by the sight of this bit of land, began talking to poni in a high-pitched voice. but le moan did not hear or heed what he said.
so, taori was going to die. and it was for this that she had taken him away from katafa. she had taken him away to have him to herself and he was turning into a dead man. to save him from death she had given herself up to peterson, to save him from death she had killed carlin and risked being killed by rantan, and yet he was going to die.
she could hear now the faint and far-away breathing of the surf on the reef ahead mixed with the words of aioma to poni; and now harsh and complaining and sudden and near came the call of a gull; a land gull, flying as if racing them.
“taori is dying because of katafa—katafa—katafa,” cried the gull, and le moan following the bird with her eyes let her gaze sweep back to the deck where taori was lying, half leaning, the sun upon his bare back where the vertabræ showed and the ribs.
and louder now came the breathing of the surf on the reef, heavy like the breathing of a weary man.
“all life is weary and full of labour,” sighed the surf, “and there is no more joy in the sun—and taori is going to die because of katafa.”
“katafa,” creaked the cordage to the foam that went sighing aft.
the wind freshened and the main sheet tautened and the great sail bellied hard against the blue, the schooner lifting to the swell crushed into it with great sighs and long shudders like the sighing and shuddering of a dying man, and the atoll leaped larger to view, the palm trees standing clear of the water above the coral and the visible foam.
“the palm grows, the coral waxes, but man departs,” whispered the wind, repeating the old rede of the islands; and now the lagoon showed through the break and le moan, watching and knowing that there, should they enter that lagoon, taori would find his last home beneath the palm trees, scarcely knew of the terrible battle raging in the darkness of her mind—knew only that she was all astray, helpless, useless, pulled this way and that between two opposing forces great as the powers of life and death; whilst louder now came the sound of the surf, louder and deeper and more solemn, till once again she was on the beach of karolin, the stars were shining, the little conch shells whispering and chirruping to keep the evil spirits away, for uta matu the king was dying and his breathing came from the house like that.
then, suddenly, with the cry of a dreamer awakened from some terrible dream, flinging out her arms to thrust away the dark spirit that had all but seized her soul and the body of taori, le moan flung poni from the wheel, seized the spokes and the schooner, checking, turned, her canvas thrashing and clawing at the wind.
turned—the island wheeling to the port quarter and the main boom flogging out with aioma and poni hauling at the sheet; turned and held, close hauled and steering for the west of north.
“karolin,” cried le moan, “aioma, the sight has come to me—the path is plain.”
“karolin!” cried aioma. “taori, the spell is broken, we are free and the net of le juan torn asunder and the spears of uta blunted.”
