swell or the set of current could never push the vessel to east or west of that line, for the line moved with the ship, and as the journey shortened, like a steadily shortening string tied to a ball in centrifugal motion, it would bring the Kermadec at last to Karolin, no matter how far she was swung out of her course—blown fifty, a hundred, two hundred miles to east or west it would not matter, her head would turn to Karolin. The only flaw in that curious navigational instrument, the mind of Le Moan, was its blindness to distance from Karolin, the pull being the same for any distance, and had the island risen suddenly before them on some dark night, she would have piled the craft upon it unless warned by the sound of the reef.
Rantan kept the log going, he had a rough idea of the distance between Karolin and Levua, but he did not try to explain the log to Le Moan. If he had done so, his labour would have been wasted. Le Moan had no idea of time as we conceive it, cut up into hours, minutes and seconds. Time for her was a thing, not an abstract idea; a thing ever present yet shifting in appearance—energy.
The recognition of Time is simply the recognition of the rhythm of energy by energy itself. Le Moan recognized the rhythm in the tides, in the sunrises and sunsets, in the going and coming of the fish shoals, in slumber and waking life, but of those figments of man’s intellect, hours, minutes, years, she had no idea.
