The dawn rose up on the shoulder of a southeast wind, warm, steady, and breezing the gold of the lagoon¹ water.  
Gulls³ flew about the schooner⁴ on board of which Dick and Aioma had slept so as to be ready for an early start.
 
Now could be heard Aioma’s voice calling up the hands from the foc’sle and now Katafa, watching from the shore, could hear the sound of the winch heaving the anchor chain short.
 
Poni, who had been chief man under Sru, knew all the moves in the game. He watched the mainsail set and the fore⁵, the gaskets taken off the jib; talking to Aioma and explaining things, he waited till the canvas was set and then gave the order for the anchor to be got in.
 
Le Moan watched as Poni, taking the wheel, let the mainsail fill to the wind that was coming nearly dead from the south, whilst the schooner, moving slowly against the trickle⁶ of the ebb⁷, crept up on the village and then turning south in a great curve made for the break on the port tack⁸.
 
Le Moan could see Katafa far away on the shore backed by the trees of the village, a tiny figure that grew less and less and less as the Gates of Morning widened before them and the thunder of the billows loudened.
 
The sun had lifted above the sea line and the swell⁹ and the wind whipped the spray across the coral of the southern pier¹⁰ whilst Aioma, hypnotized, half terrified, yet showing nothing of it all stood, his dream realized at last.
 
Oh, but the heart clutch when she heeled to starboard and he recognized that there was no outrigger to port—for the outrigger is always fastened to the port side of canoes—no outrigger to port for the crew to crawl out on and stabilize¹¹ her by their weight, and when she heeled to port the terror came lest the outrigger should be run too deep under.
 
There was no outrigger, he knew it—but, just as in the dream ship, he could not get rid of the obsession¹² of it.
 
Moreover, now that the canvas was raised, now that the wind was bravely filling it, the enormousness of the size of those great sails would have set his teeth chattering¹³ had he not clenched¹⁴ his jaws¹⁵.
 
To take a ship out of Karolin lagoon with the ebb running strong and a south wind, required a cool head and a steady nerve on the part of the steersman. The great lagoon emptying like a bath met the northerly current, the outflowing waters setting up a cross sea. There was also a point where steerage way was lost and it all depended how the ship was set for the opening as to whether she would broach¹⁶ to and be dashed against the coral.
 
But Poni was used to lagoon waters and the schooner safe in his hands came dead for the centre of the opening; then the ebb took her, like an arrow she came past the piers¹⁷ of coral, met the wash of the cross sea, shook herself and then to the thunder of thrashing, cleared the land and headed north.
 
“She will eat the wind,” Aioma had once said, “there will be no more wind left for canoes in all the islands”; and now as Poni shifted the helm and the main boom stuttered and then lashed¹⁸ out to port, she was eating the wind indeed, the wind that was coming now almost dead aft. The smashing of the seas against her bows had ceased: with a following swell and a following breeze, silence took them—silence broken only by the creak of timber, block and cordage.
 
Le Moan looked back again. Almost behind them to the sou’-sou’west Karolin lay with the morning splendour on its vast outer beach whose song came faint across the blue sea, on the tall palms bending to the wind, on its gulls for ever fishing.
 
Her eyes trained to great distances could pick out the thicker tree clumps¹⁹ where the houses lay and near the trees on a higher point of coral something that was not coral; the form of a girl, a mote²⁰ in the sea dazzle now perceived, now gone.
 
Le Moan watched till the reef line was swallowed by the shimmer²¹ from which the trees rose as if footed in the sea. She had stirred no hand in the whole of this business: her coming on board had been at the direction of Aioma, the fate that threw her and Taori together even for a few hours whilst separating him from Katafa was a thing working beyond and outside her, and yet it came to her that all this was part of the message of the cassi flowers, something that had to be because of her love for Taori, something brought into existence by the power of her passion—something that united her for ever with Taori.
 
The mind of Le Moan had no littleness, it was wanting in many things but feeble in nothing; it was merciless but not cruel, and when the sun of Taori shone on it, it showed heights and depths that had only come into being through the shining of that sun. For the sake of Taori she had sacrificed herself to Peterson, for the sake of Taori she had destroyed Carlin, for the sake of Taori she would sacrifice herself again, she who knew not even the meaning of the word “unselfish” or the meaning of the word “pity.”
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