It was the ship’s bell.  
Tahuku had struck it in idleness, just as a child might, but the unaccustomed sound coming just then seemed to Aioma a response to the words of the other. But he said nothing. Taori had chosen his path and he must pursue it.
 
At noon the northern horizon still showed clear and unbroken by any sign of land, yet still the wind blew strong and still the schooner¹ sped like a gull² before it.
 
Tahuku, who had been cook and who knew where the stores were kept, prepared a meal; and whilst the crew were eating, Aioma took the place of the lookout³ in the bow. Nothing—neither land gull nor trace of land. Nothing but the never ending run of the swell⁴ bluer from the southern drift that showed still the contrast of the deeper blue.
 
A road leading nowhere.
 
The canoe-builder came up to where Dick was standing⁵ in the bow.
 
“Taori,” said Aioma, “we have not lost our way, there runs the current and there Karolin still shows us her light, we have come faster than the big canoes of forty paddles and so have we come since morning, yet Marua is not in sight.”
 
It was late afternoon, and Aioma as he spoke⁶ skimmed the sea line from west to east of north with eyes wrinkled against the light.
 
“No cloud hides it,” went on the old man like a child explaining a difficulty, “it is full day, yet it is not there—to our sight.”
 
Dick, as perturbed⁷ as Aioma, said nothing. He knew quite well that by now Marua should have been high on the horizon. They had been travelling since morning, how swiftly he could not tell, but with great speed, seeing that they had with them the wind and the current; also the sky stain made by Karolin was now very vague, vague as when he had viewed it from Marua.
 
“Where then is it gone?” went on the old fellow, “or how is it hidden? Has Uta Matu cast a spell upon us or has Marua been washed away?” Then turning as if from a suddenly glimpsed vision: “Taori—we may sail till the days and the nights are left behind us with the sun and the moon and the stars, but Marua we shall not see again.”
 
Dick still said nothing. He refused to believe that Uta Matu had the power to put a spell on them and he refused to believe that Marua had been washed away by those waves that did little more than smash a few houses at Karolin. All the same he was disturbed. Where then was Marua?
 
Poni, who was standing near them with Le Moan who had heard what Aioma said, suddenly struck in, in his sing-song voice.
 
“Surely we passed an island when Pete’son commanded this ship and we were running on this course, an island that would be about here, but is not here any more—and you remember the great waves that came to us at Karolin and the gulls⁸ who sought a home? All these things have just come together in my head as it might be three persons meeting and conversing⁹. Well then, Aioma, it is clear to me now that this island you seek is gone beneath the sea. At the time of the gulls and those great waves, I said to Timan, that somewhere an island had gone under just as Somaya which lay not far from Soma went under in the time before I started to sail in the deep-sea ships. One day it was there and the next day it was not, and there were the big waves just like those that came to Karolin. Marua, you called this island; well, Aioma, you may be sure that Marua has gone under the sea.”
 
And now strangely enough Aioma, so far from accepting the support of this statement, turned upon the unfortunate Poni who had dared to bring experience and common-sense with him to the bar.
 
“Gone under!” The scream of laughter with which Aioma received this suggestion when it had percolated¹⁰ down into the basement of his intelligence made the faces of the others turn as they stood about near the foc’sle head discussing the same subject.
 
“Gone under!” What did Poni mean by such silly talk, did he not know that it was impossib............