Then from the shore you might have seen the Kermadec like a frightened bird unfolding her wings as the boat came on board and the anchor came home, mainsail, foresail and jib filling to the steady wind coming like an accomplice¹ out of the west, the forefoot cutting a ripple² in the starlit waters of the lagoon³ and the stern swinging slowly towards Levua, where two white men lay dead in the trader’s house and where in the village by the sandal grove⁴ Tahuku and his men lay asleep, unconscious of what civilization had done in their name.  
Rantan, steering⁵, brought the ship through the broad passage in the reefs where the starlight lit the spray of the breaking swell⁶, the vessel⁷ lifting to the heave of the sea caught a stronger flow of wind and with the main boom swung to port headed due south.
 
Rantan handed the wheel to Sru and turned to a bundle lying in the port scuppers. It was Carlin sound asleep and snoring; the mate touched the beachcomber with his foot and then turning, went below.
 
He saw the locker⁸ smashed open and the whiskey bottle in the bunk⁹, he opened a porthole and flung the bottle out and then turning to the locker, searched it. There were two more bottles in the locker and having sent them after the first, he closed the port and sat down at the table under the swinging lamp.
 
Kermadec, cargo¹⁰, crew and ship’s money were his; the crew knew nothing except that Tahuku had killed Pete’son and the white trader; there was no man to speak except Sru, who dared not speak, and Carlin who knew nothing definite. In time and at a proper season it was possible that these might be rendered dumb and out of count, and this would be the story of the Kermadec.
 
Without her captain, murdered by the natives of Levua, and navigated¹¹ by her mate, who knew little or nothing of navigation, she had attempted to make back to Soma; had missed Soma and found a big lagoon island, Karolin, which was not on the charts. There Sru, the bo’sun, and Carolin, a white man, had died of fish poisoning, and there she had lain for a year—doing what...?
 
“And what were you doing all that time, Mr. Rantan?” The question was being put to him before an imaginary Admiralty court, and the answer “Pearling” could not be given.
 
It was only now, with everything done and the ship his, that the final moves in the game were asking to be solved; up to this the first moves had claimed all his mental energy.
 
The Kermadec could be lost on some civilized¹² coast quite easily, everything would be quite easy but the accounting¹³ for that infernal year—and it would take a year at least to make good in a pearl lagoon.
 
No, the Kermadec must never come within touch of civilization again, once he was sure of the pearl ground being worth working; the vessel must go; with the longboat he might get at last back to Soma or some of the Paumotuan islands—might.
 
The fact of his ignorance of navigation that had helped his story so far, hit him now on the other side, the fact so useful before a Board of Trade enquiry would help him little with the winds and tides and to the winds and tides he had committed himself in the long run.
 
He came on deck. The crew, all but the watch, had crowded down into the foc’sle where all danger over and well............