The Gates of Morning/Book 4/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
HE HAS TURNED HIS FACE FROM THE SUN
THE Ocean is a congregation of rivers, the drift currents and the stream currents; rivers, some constant in their flow, some intermittent and variable; some wide, as in the case of the Brazil current which at its broadest covers four hundred and fifty miles; some narrow as in the case of the Karolin-Marua drift, scarcely twenty miles from east to west. The speed of these rivers varies from five miles a day to fifteen or thirty, as in the case of the Brazil current, or from ten to a hundred and twenty miles a day as in the case of the Gulf Stream.
Sometimes these rivers, lying almost side by side, are flowing in opposite directions, as in the case of the north running Karolin-Marua current and the southerly drift that had now got the schooner in its grasp; and each one of these streams of the sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, has its own peculiar people, from the Japanese swordfish of the Kuro Shiwo to the Gambier turtles on the Karolin-Marua.
Left without wind the schooner drifted, her sails casting vast reflections on the glassy swell; sometimes, away out, a slight disturbance on the water would show where a sleeping turtle had suddenly submerged, and over-side in the ship’s shadow, fucus and jelly-fish floating fathoms deep could be seen drifting with the ship. Nothing else. Neither shark nor albacore nor palu nor gull spoke of life across or beneath that glacial sea.
The sun sank in a west of solid gold and the stars took the night, the sails showing black against the brilliant ceiling.
Dick, who had come on deck before sunset, stood by Aioma at the after rail. He seemed himself again, but he had not eaten that day; a fact that disturbed the canoe-builder, who had turned from dark thoughts and misgivings to a sort of cheery fatalism. Aioma was alive and there was food and water on board for a long time and the wind might blow soon or the drift—he sensed a drift—take them somewhere. He had a feeling also that his curses had closed the mouth of Le Juan; he had eaten well, and his belly was full of ship’s food and bananas, so his sturdy nature refused depression.
“Of what use,” he was saying, “is a man without food? A man is the paraka he eats and the fish.... Go and eat, Taori, for without food a man is not a man.”
“I will eat to-morrow,” said Taori, “I have no heart for eating now.”
Away forward crouching in her old place Le Moan listened to the creak of the ship as it moved to the swell and watched the stars that shone on Karolin.
The faithful unbreakable sense born with her as truly as the power of the water-finder is born in him, or the power of the swallow to find its southern nest, told her just where Karolin lay; away on the starboard beam to the north, now dead aft as the schooner turned to some gentle swirl of the current, now a bit to port, now back again to starboard.
She could see the figures of Taori and Aioma in the starlight and she could hear the voices of Poni and the others from the foc’sle, the creak of the timbers and the creak of the main boom as it moved to the rocking of the swell. She too had not eaten that day.
She had done her work and she had received her reward. With his body in her arms and her lips on his neck, she had drunk him as a creature dying of thirst might drink long delicious draughts from a poisoned well; for he had clung to her not in the passion of love, but of misery, and he had let her hold him as a comforter not as a lover, and she knew that till the stars fell dead and the sun ceased to shine that never would he be closer to her than that.
This knowledge had come to her from the very contact with his body, from the clasp of his arms about her neck. He had told her unconsciously and without speech more than he could have ever have told her in words. He was Katafa’s.
He was for ever out of her reach, sure and certain instinct told her that, yet he was near her and she could see him—they were together.
Only a little before sundown Aioma had said to her, “Le Moan, maybe since the wind has gone the spell of Uta Matu has ceased to work. Shut your eyes, turn, and see if you cannot get a view again of where Karolin lies; is the sight of it still gone from you, Le Moan?”
“It is still gone,” she had answered him, “and even if it were with me, of what use, for there is no wind?”
She had told the lie looking him in the face and seeing only Taori.
It was no little jealousy that made her lie; she had no jealousy towards Katafa whom Fate had bound to Taori before she had seen him. He had not chosen Katafa in preference to her; perhaps that was why her heart held no jealousy. All the same to bring him back, to take the wheel and steer him into the arms of Katafa—she could not.
To save his life she could easily have died for him, to give him back to joy and love was impossible.
The night passed and the sun rose on another day of calm, and still the schooner drifted, the variable current setting her back sometimes, sometimes leading her a bit more south. Truly it was a great calm as Aioma had predicted and it fell on Taori, as on the sea, like the hand of death. He scarcely ate at all; he had fallen away from himself, his mind seemed far away, he scarcely spoke.
As men who have never met the microbes of disease fall easily victims and die when other men only fall ill, Taori, who had never before known grief, in the language of Aioma, turned his face from the sun.
On Karolin men had often died like that, of no disease—because of insult, because of a woman, sometimes just for some reason that seemed trivial. It is one of the strangest attributes of the kanaka, this power of departing from the world when life becomes unendurable, too heavy or even just wearisome.
“He has turned his face from the sun,” said Aioma to Poni one morning—the fourth morning of the calm—and Le Moan who was nearby heard the words.
It was on that same morning that the breeze came, a light air from the north strengthening to a steady sailing wind, and almost on the breeze came the call of the lookout who had climbed to the cross-trees.
“Land!”
Just a few palm tree tops to the southeast, the trees of a tiny atoll, so small that it cast no lagoon reflection; and Aioma who had climbed to see came down again whilst Poni, who had taken the wheel, put the ship to the southeast taking his position from the sun not far above the eastern skyline.
Presently the far-off treetops could be seen from the deck, but Dick as Poni steered, and after a glance at the distant trees, lost interest.
He had turned his face from the sun.