The sun touched the sea line, the blazing water leaping to meet him, and then in a west golden and desolate1, in a sea whose water had turned to living light, he began to drown.
Dick watched as the golden brow, almost submerged, showed a lingering crescent of fire and then sank, carrying the day with it as Marua had sunk carrying with it his youth and the last visible threads connecting him with civilization.
He turned. Le Moan had taken the wheel.
The sails that had been golden were now ghost white and a topaz star had already pierced the pansy blue where in the west the new moon hung like a little tilted2 boat.
“To the south,” cried Aioma. “E Haya—to the south, Le Moan, to Karolin now that we have seen there is nothing to be seen, to the south; to the south, for I am weary of these waters.”
Le Moan, dumb and dim in the starlight now flooding the world, spun3 the wheel; on the rattle4 of the rudder chain came the thrashing of canvas and the schooner5 bowing to the swell6 lay over on the port tack—due east.
Aioma glanced towards the moon but Le Moan reassured7 him.
“The current is fighting us,” said she, “and I would get beyond it. Have patience, Aioma, the way is clear to me.”
He turned away satisfied and lay down on deck. Dick, who had brought up some blankets from below to serve as a sleeping mat, lay down by him, and the kanakas, all but Poni and Tahuku, went to their bunks8 in the foc’sle.
Aioma, lying on his face with his forehead on his arms, heard the rattle of the rudder chain and knew that Le Moan was edging now to the south. She would steer9 all night with the help of Poni, and sure of her and sure of Karolin showing before them at daybreak, he let his mind wander, now to the canoe-building, now to the spearing of great fish, till sleep took him as it had taken Dick.
Le Moan, steering10, could see their bodies in the starlight, and beyond them Poni and Tahuku seated close to the galley11, their heads together talking and smoking, heedless of everything but the eternal chatter12 about nothing which they could keep up for hours together, whilst the schooner under the hands of the steersman was heading again due east.
An hour after midnight the wind shifted, blowing from the west of south. Poni came aft to see if Le Moan wanted anything, food, water, a drinking nut—she wanted nothing; as she had steered13 all that night ............