Dick knew now that Sru was out of count, like the big fish when they went stiff, and he knew he had knocked him like that just with a blow.
He came out pulling the bananas after him, the birds flew away, and Dick, approaching the body, touched it with his toe. The creature with the broken neck was stiff now as a board, and his slayer stood looking at him, a boy no longer, but a man.
Dick knew nothing about death except its effect upon fish, eels, lobsters and crabs. Some of these fought him like the big eel he had hooked a month ago in the northward stretch of the lagoon and which he had killed just as he had killed Sru, the second son of Laminai, whom Katafa, without intention and through Fate, had brought to his death.
He touched the body again with his toe. Then, seizing his precious bananas, he took them to the dinghy hidden in the branches of the aoa and embarked with them.
As he turned the cape he heard the quarrelling of great gulls, sharp and fierce as the voices of the canoe men. One might almost have fancied it to be their voices rising and falling on the breeze.
“Kara! Kara! Kara!” “War! War! War!”
CHAPTER XVIII
WAR
“Katafa,” said Dick that night as they sat after supper, idle, watching the dusk rise over the lagoon, “men came to-day in a boat like yours.”
Katafa heaved a great sigh; then she sat as if the breath were stricken out of her, without a word, her eyes fixed on the other.