Three weeks’ work had recreated the houses broken by the great waves, and put a top knob to the work of the builders. Nan had been recovered. A boy found him cast up in the sand near the break. A new post for him was cut, and Karolin, no longer godless, was itself again. But Aioma was not happy.  
The sea when it had swept the reef had not disturbed the tree trunks felled and partly shaped, or had only altered their position slightly as they lay waiting for the canoe-builders to resume work; but Aioma had lost heart in the business. He had come to the conclusion that the schooner¹ was better than any fleet of canoes, and all his desires were fixed² on her.
 
Yet still something called him to the shaping of the logs, the voice of the Unfinished Job perhaps calling to the true workman, or maybe just the voice of habit—all the same he did not turn to it. He was under the spell of the schooner. Pulled this way and that he was unhappy. It is hard to give up a life’s vocation³ even at the call of something better, and he would sit sometimes squatting⁴ on the sands, his face turned now to the object of his passion, and now towards the trees that talked to him of the half-born canoes.
 
Meanwhile in his mind there lay side by side and growing daily, a great curiosity and a great ambition.
 
The curiosity had been born of the battle of the gulls⁵.
 
“What,” asked he of himself, “has happened to the reef of Marua (Palm Tree)?” He knew Marua, he had been one of the fighters in the great battle of long years ago when the men of the north of Karolin had pursued the men of the south and slain⁷ them on Palm Tree beach. He had seen the reef and instinct told him that the invading gulls of three weeks ago had come from there.
 
They were seeking a new home. Why? What had happened to the reef, or what had driven them from the reef?
 
Had the great waves of the same day, those three great waves that he still beheld⁸ scintillating⁹ in his mind, had they destroyed the reef? But how could that be, since they had not destroyed Karolin reef? The whole thing was a mystery and beside the curiosity that it excited, there lay in his mind the great Ambition, to take the schooner into the open sea and sail her there.
 
The lagoon¹⁰, great as it was, was too small for him, besides, it was dangerous to the west with shoals and banks.
 
No, the outer sea was the place for him and there came the rub—Katafa.
 
Katafa had a horror of the vessel¹¹. She would not go on board it and well he knew that Taori would not go any distance from Karolin without Katafa, and he (Aioma) greatly daring, wished to go a long way, even as far as Marua, to see what had happened to the reef.
 
There you have the whole tangle¹² and you can see how the curiosity and the ambition had grown together whilst lying side by side in his mind.
 
There was also a scheme.
 
Katafa would not object to Taori going out in the schooner a little way, and Taori would not mind leaving Katafa for a little time. And, thought the cunning Aioma, once we are out beyond there I will tell him what is in my mind about the gulls and the reef and he will want to go and see; it is not far and the colour of the current will lead us as it always has led the canoes, and the light of Karolin in the sky (ayamasla) will lead us back; besides, I will take with me Le Moan, who can find her way without eyes. Cooking this scheme in his mind he said nothing for some days till one evening, getting Taori and Katafa alone with him, he broached¹³ the id............