are sure of them now, they are in the mammee apple, all except one who is very young and who says that he has no heart for women.”
He spoke of Kanoa. Kanoa brooding alone by the water’s edge, sick with love and desire. Love that was even greater than desire, for the deed of Le Moan that had stirred in him the ghosts of his ancestors, had raised the soul of Kanoa beyond the flesh where hitherto it had been tangled and blind.
Meanwhile Le Moan slept. Slept whilst the dusk rose and the stars came out, slept till the moon high against the milky way pierced the house of Uta Matu with her shafts.
Then sleep fell from her gradually and turning on her elbow she saw the moon rays shining through the canes of the wall, the little ships ghostly on their shelves and through the doorway the wonderful world of moonlit reef and sea.
Nothing broke the stillness of the night but the surf of the reef and a gentle wind that stirred the palm fronds with a faint pattering rainy sound and passed away across the mammee apple where men and women lay embraced, who the night before had not known even of each other’s existence.
Before the doorway, sheltered from the moon by a tree shadow, all but their feet that showed fully in the light, two forms lay stretched on a mat—Taori and Katafa. They had given up their house to the saviour of Karolin, taken a mat from one of the women’s houses, and fallen asleep with only the tree
