Le Moan steered¹. Tireless and heedless of time as when she had brought the schooner² first to Karolin, she kept the wheel all that day and through the night, giving it over to Poni for short intervals³, whilst Dick slept.
 
She had given life back to him and it was almost as though she had given him her own life, for the world around her had become as the world wherein ghosts move; disembodied spirits, not dead but no longer connected with earth.
 
Before setting eyes on Taori, she had lived on the southern beach of Karolin, lonely, cut off with Aioma and the others who had no interests beyond the interests of the moment; as she lived so might she have died neither happy nor unhappy, without pity and without love or care for the morrow or thought of the past.
 
Then Taori had come, not as a man but as a light greater than the sun, a light that struck through the darkness of her being, bringing to birth a new self that was his—that was he.
 
She had braved death and the unknown—everything—only to find herself at the end face to face with death, and death saying to her “He is mine—or Katafa’s.”
 
Like the woman who stood before Solomon, she had to choose between the destruction of the thing she loved and the handing of it to a rival to be lost to her forever, to see its arms clinging to another, and its love given to another, and its life becoming part of the life of another; and she chose the greater sacrifice, not because she was Le Moan, a creature extraordinary or supernormal, but just because at heart she was a woman.
 
A woman, acting⁴, when brought to the great test, less as an individual than as a part of the spirit of womanhood. The spirit changeless through the ages and unalterable. The spirit so often hidden by the littleness of the flesh, so seldom put to the heroic test, so absolutely certain in its answer to it. For when a woman really loves she becomes a mother even though she never may conceive or produce a child.
 
Aioma, who had slept through the night on his belly⁵ on the deck, spread like a starfish, awoke as the sun was rising.
 
Poni was at the wheel—Le Moan had gone below. The cabin had no fears for her now, and she had said to Poni, just as the sun was rising and pointing into the west of north, “You will see the lagoon⁶ light there.”
 
Dick, by the galley⁷, was still sleeping, Tahuku and Tirai were the watch.
 
The beauty of that sunrise on that blue and lonely sea, beyond word or brush, was unseen by Aioma.
 
“It will be over there,” said Poni, pointing ahead. “It does not show yet.” Aioma went forward and stood looking into the northwest. No, it did not show yet nor would it show till the sun was twice its diameter above the horizon. Aioma, listening to the slash⁸ of the bow breaking the water and fanned by the draught⁹ from the head sails, having swept the sky found his eye caught by something far across the sea and right in their course. It looked at first glance like a rock but at once his bird-like eyes resolved it into what it was—a ship, an ayat, but with no sail set.
 
The canoe-builder glanced back along the deck past the sleeping figure of Dick to the figure of Poni at the wheel, then he turned his eyes again upon the far-off ship, and now in the sky to the north above and beyond the ship lay something for which he had been on the lookout—the lagoon light of Karolin, almost imperceptible, but there just in the position where Le Moan had said it would be.
 
The something he had waited and longed for, but spoiled, almost threatened, by this apparition¹⁰ of a ship.
 
Aioma wanted to have nothing more to do with ships; this traverse in the schooner had turned him clean back towards canoes; for days past, though he had said no word on the matter, all his ancestors had been hammering at the door of his mind shouting, “Aioma, you are a fool, you have forsaken¹¹ the canoes of your forefathers¹² for this ayat, and see how it has betrayed you, and why? Because it is the invention of the white men, the cursed papalagi who have always brought trouble to Karolin. If we could get at you, Aioma, we would stake you out on the reef for the sharks to eat. You deserve it.”
 
He had said nothing of this because Aioma never confessed to a fault.
 
Well there was another ayat, blocking the way to Karolin and sure to bring trouble.
 
Civilization and trouble had come to be convertible¹³ ideas in the mind of this old gentleman who although he did not know the English word that represents greed, brutality¹⁴, disease, drink, and robbery dressed in self-righteousness, had sensed the fact that the white man always brought trouble.
 
Well, there it was straight before him heading her off from Karolin. What should he do? Turn and run away from it? Oh, no. Aioma, who had fought the big rays and who was never happier than when at grips with a conger, was not the person to turn his back on danger or threat, especially now with Karolin in view.
 
This thing lay straight in his path, as if daring him, and he accepted the challenge; they had the speak sticks, there were eight of them not including Le Moan and if it came to a fight—well, he was ready.
 
Without rousing Dick, he called the fellows up from below, pointed¹⁵ out the ship and then stood watching as she grew.
 
Now she stood on the water plainly to be seen, a brig with canvas stowed as if in preparation for a blow. If any canvas had been set it must have been blown away by the wind, for she showed nothing but her sticks as she lay rolling gently to the swell¹⁶.
 
Tahuku, who had the instinct of a predatory gull¹⁷ coupled with the eye of a hawk¹⁸, suddenly laughed:
 
“She is empty,” said Tahuku, “she has no men on her. It is a dead turtle, Aioma, you have called on us to spear.”
 
Aioma hit by the same truth ran and roused Dick, who on waking sprang to his feet. He was renewed by sleep and hope, a creature reborn and as he stood with the others he scarcely noticed the ship, his eyes fixed¹⁹ on the light of Karolin.
 
Poni at the wheel called Le Moan and she came up from below and stood watching whilst the brig, now close to them, showed her nakedness and desolation beneath the burning light of morning.
 
Old-fashioned, even for these days, high-pooped, heavily sparred and with an up-jutting bowsprit, her hull²⁰ of a ghastly faded green rolled with a weary movement to the undulations of the swell, revealing now the weed-grown copper²¹ of her sheathing²², now a glimpse of the deserted²³ deck. There were no boats at the da............