Then she talked to them respecting what she had already told to Kanoa, telling them also that the men of Karolin were not enemies but friends, that Rantan and the red-bearded man though fair-spoken were indeed devils in disguise, that they had killed many of the men of Karolin, killed Sru and his companions and intended on the morrow to kill Kanoa and the rest. And they sat listening to her as children listen to the tales about ogres—believing, bewildered, terrified, not knowing what to do.
These men were not cowards; under circumstances known and understood they were brave, weather could not frighten them nor war against kindred races, but the white man was a different thing and Rantan they feared even more than Carlin.
They would not move a hand in this matter of striking at them. It would be better to take the boat and land on the reef and trust to the men of Karolin if they were trustworthy as Le Moan had reported.
Poni, the biggest and strongest of them, said this and the others nodded their heads in approval, and Le Moan laughed; she knew them and told them so, told them that as she had saved them by overhearing Rantan’s plans, she would save them now, that they had nothing to do but wait and watch and prepare their minds for friendship with her people when she had finished what she intended to do.
Then she rose up.
As she stood with the moonlight full on her, a voice broke the silence of the night. It came from the saloon hatchway, a voice sudden, chattering2, complaining and ceasing all at once as if cut off by a closed door. They knew what it was, the voice of a man talking in his sleep. Carlin on his back and seized by nightmare had cried out, half awakened3, turned and fallen asleep again.
The group seated on the deck, after a momentary4 movement, resumed their positions. There is something so distinctive5 in the voice of a sleep-talker that the sound, after the first momentary flutter caused by it, brought assurance. Then, prepared at any moment to make a dash for the boat, they sat, the palms of their hands flat on the deck and their eyes following Le Moan, now gliding6 towards the hatch, the spear head in her left hand, her right hand touching7 the port rail as she went.
At the hatch she paused to listen. She could hear the reef, and on its sonorous8 murmur9 like a tiny silver thread of sound the trickle10 of the tide on the planking of the schooner11, and from the dark pit of the stairway leading to the saloon another sound, the breathing of men asleep.
She had never been below. That stairway, even in daylight, had always filled her with fear, the fear of the unknown, the dread12 of a trap, the claustrophobia of one always used to open spaces.
Lit by the day it frightened her, in its black darkness it appalled13 her; yet she had to go down, for the life of Taori lay at the bottom of that pit to be saved by her hands and hers alone.
Kanoa, amongst the others, sat watching. The mind of Kanoa so filled with fear when she told him that his death was imminent14, the mind of Kanoa that had lusted15 for her, the mind of this child of eighteen to whom light and laughter had been life and thought, a thing of the moment, was no longer the same mind.
The great heroism16 he was watching, this attempt to save him and the others, had awakened in him something perhaps of the past, ancestors who had fought, done great deeds and suffered—who knows—but there came to him an elation17 such as he had felt in the movements of the dance and at the sound of music. Rising and evading18 Poni who clutched at his leg to hold him back, he came to the rail, stood for a moment as Le Moan vanished from sight and then swift-footed but silent as a shadow, glided19 to the saloon hatch and stood listening.
Holding the polished banister rail, and moving cautiously, step by step, Le Moan descended20, the spear head in her left hand. As she came, a waft21 from the cabin rose to meet her in the darkness—an odour of humanity and stale tobacco smoke, bunk22-bedding and bilge.
It met her like an evil ghost, it grappled with her and tried to drive her back; used as she was to the fresh sea air, able to
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