VI.
They passed islands, and there was not an island they passed that did not make Uliami feel as though he had swallowed Paulii and it had risen in his throat.
As first, and for many days, he noticed in his ears a sound which was yet not a sound. Then he knew it was the sound of the reef that had been in his ears since childhood, but had now drawn away and gone from him, leaving only its memory. The food displeased him, and the work and the faces of his companions, and he would have given his pay and all he possessed for a sniff of the winds blowing from the high woods, or a sight of the surf on the shores of Tilafeaa.
He had only one companion—his anger against Tauti. He saw now that he had been served a trick, and put the whole matter down to the wiles of the other, little thinking that it was Sikra who had played this game against them both.