It was the voice of Dick fighting his battle with Sru over again in his dreams.
“Katafa!” came the voice, “hai amonai Katafa—help! He is seizing me!” Then a mumble of unintelligible words dying off to silence and the sound of Dick tossing uneasily in his sleep.
She stood with the starlight showering on her and the wind stirring her hair. Something had come between her and the deathly prompting to destroy him. Perhaps it was the voice suddenly shattering the silence and her purpose, or the appeal for help, the first that had ever reached her from human being.
She stood with her head uptilted as a person stands who is trying to catch some far-away sound. Then she drifted away, crossing the sward and vanishing among the trees.
Lying in her shack, she knew that the shark-toothed god had been about to seize Taori with claws of fire—as indeed he had. Taori had called to her for help, and she had helped by not firing the thatch. She could not understand in the least why she had held her hand, or why the appeal for help had so shattered her purpose. She didn’t try. She only knew that something had balked her for the moment.
CHAPTER XIX
DAYBREAK
For a moment only.
Next day and for days after, Katafa, drawing apart from Dick, would sit brooding, watchful, waiting, but wherever she might be, by the wood edge or lagoon bank, if Dick were in sight her face would be turned towards him, her eyes stealthily watching him.
She had forgotten Karolin. There was only one thing in the world now that mattered to her—Dick.