One night, when the disease seemed past and only ten people were left of all those who had watched the burning of the schooner¹, Le Moan, sleeping by Kanoa, was awakened² by Katafa.
 
Katafa was weeping.
 
She seized Le Moan by the hands and raising her without waking Kanoa, led her to the house above which Nan still stood frizzy-headed in the moonlight.
 
In the house on a mat Dick was lying tossing his head from side to side and talking in a strange tongue.
 
Talking the language of his early childhood, calling out to Kearney whom he had long forgotten, but whom he remembered now.
 
The green sickness had seized Dick—resisted for days and days it had him at last.
 
Le Moan stood in the doorway³ and the moon looking over her shoulder lit the form on the mat, the reef spoke⁴ and the wind in the trees, but she heard nothing, saw nothing and for a moment felt nothing.
 
Taori was lying on the mat talking in a strange tongue, turning his head from side to side.
 
Then, as a person all but drowned, all but dead, comes slowly back to life and comes in agony, Le Moan began to feel the world come round her once more, the world she had known before she tore her heart out.
 
Taori was going to die. And the heart she had torn out was back again and the love that had filled it.
 
Taori was going to die—to die as the others had died and as surely, and as certainly through her who had brought this curse on Karolin and through whom the hand of Le Juan was still striking.
 
So great was the power of this thought that it fought with and overcame the passionate⁵ desire to fling herself on her knees beside him and take him in her arms; so great was its power that it almost drove the thought of him away before the crowding recollections it brought up of her own disastrous⁶ history in which she had brought evil to everyone. To Peterson, to Rantan, to Carlin, to Poni, to Tahuku—Tirai, all whom she had touched or come in contact with. To Aioma—and lastly to Taori.
 
Taori is going to die—Ai amasu Taori—the wind sighed it above him, it came mixed with the sobbing⁷ of Katafa and the voice of the beach with the rumbling⁸ voice of Taori himself, talking, talking, talking, as he wandered on the reef of memory with Kearney in a land that knew not Katafa.
 
Ai amasu Taori—and she dared not bid him goodbye; to save him she must go, leave him untouched, for the net of Le Juan was not yet torn, nor the spears of Uta blunted.
 
Even to look at him was fatal, yet she could not tear her eyes away.
 
Ai amusu Taori—a great breaker on the coral cried it to the night and broke the spell and turned her towards the weeping Katafa.
 
“Oh, Katafa,” said Le Moan, speaking in a voice clear but scarcely above a whisper, “Taori will not die—I go to save him; the nets are spread for him but I will break them, I the daughter of Le Jennibon, the daughter of Le Juan”
 
Even as she spoke the voice from the house quieted.
 
“I who have brought this evil.” Katafa heard her voice, not knowing what she said, for the change in the voice of the sick man was speaking to her.
 

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