She heard a shout. It was Dick, who had just come back from the woods. He was running down to the lagoon bank, wild with excitement and not regarding her in the least as he stood watching, whilst the orcas, steadfast as death, clinging to left and right, hung, thrashing, till the great barn-door mouth of the cachalot opened at last and, swift as ferrets, they began to root and tear out the tongue.
Then, suddenly, the body of the cachalot bent and, with the snap of a released spring, it turned, dashing the spray tree-high, and drove back down the lagoon with the rush of a torpedo boat, sharks and dogfish following after to be lost beyond the cape.
Dick, shouting like a maniac, followed through the trees to see the end. Katafa, gazing with wide-pupilled eyes at the blood-stained waters of the pool, shivered.
She had seen orcas hunting and destroying a cachalot from the outer beach of Karolin and the sight had left her without emotion, but the mind of Katafa had changed, and the world around her had found voices telling her of things unguessed and undreamed of till now.
The great fight had brought matters to a head with her, coupling itself in some extraordinary way, by antithesis, with the warm tenderness revealed by the birds and with Dick, who had just vanished heedless of her.
What the bluebirds had whispered, the battle had suddenly shouted: “You stand alone. A world lies around you of which you know nothing. It belongs to Taori; never shall you enter it.”
She looked up at the birds, happy and building, heedless of the terror that had just passed and vanished. She looked at the pool, still murky, its surface spangled with prismatic colours where streaks of oil had spread. She looked at the far-off reef and the sea beyond, and she saw nothing but Taori, that beautiful lithe form, that face, fearless and ever seeming to look upwards, those eyes full of sight for all things but her. Until now she had never really seen him. She heard again his voice calling on her for help.
Like a person wandering in sleep, she passed along the lagoon bank towards the eastern trees, seeing nothing, moving by instinct, scarcely alive, terribly, suddenly and mortally stricken. Sounds filled her ears like the chiming of the reef coral when the breakers of the high tide were coming in, sounds now broken and diffuse, now calling his name, gull-clear: “Taori! Taori! Taori!”
Then, breaking away from the dream state and turning to a great tree, she cast her arms about it, embracing it like a living thing and resting her cheek against its smooth, sun-warmed bark, clinging to it and the great momentary peace that had come to her tormented heart.