Dick watched without moving till the flurry passed, the leviathan, like a ship turned turtle, moving ever more slowly whilst the shark fins vanished and a gull lit on it as the gull had lit on the chest of Sru.
When he returned to the house, Katafa was nowhere in sight. He did not trouble about her; his mind was too full of the things he had seen. He ate his supper and turned in, but he could not sleep. Katafa, supperless in her shack, gazing with wide-open eyes at the starlight seen through the leaves, could not sleep. She had seen him come back, cook his food, and vanish into the house. He had never called for her as he usually did were she absent at meal time; he never had called for her unless he wanted her for something, to help in the cooking, to carry his spears, to work the boat. She was less to him than the fish he had just eaten or the mat he was lying on.
It was only now that she recognised this. Steadily, bit by bit, strand by strand, the clutch of taminan on her conscious mind had been broken so that her heart could beat as the human heart beats and her eyes could show her heart what it desired. Powerful as ever in her subconscious self, the spell remained capable of separating her for ever from the touch of human being, but her conscious mind had found release, an object to grasp with all the pent-up passion of her nature—and its indifference to her.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CRISIS
Next morning Dick, who had spent the night hunting cachalots in dreamland, came out to find Katafa lighting the fire for breakfast. She seemed just the same as ever, save for the fact that she had no flower in her hair, but a third person, had one been present, would have noticed that her eyes evaded him, that she ate scarcely anything, and sat mumchance as though some bitter quarrel had arisen between them.
Dick noticed nothing of all this. He did not even help to clear away and tidy the place. He was off to see if there was anything left of the cachalot, and as he picked up a spear and made away towards the opposite trees, he shouted some words of directions to her which she did not reply to. She seemed deaf as well as dumb, and when he was gone, instead of clearing away the remains of the food and putting out the fire, she turned on her side and lay with eyes half closed, scarcely breathing, seemingly asleep. Her half-closed eyes were fixed on the point where Dick had vanished among the trees—Dick, who, without a thought of her, was making his way through the woods, now skirting the water side, now plunging through the growths of mammee-apple and fern.
When he reached the beach, all traces of the cachalot were gone. Not a sign remained of the great fight of yesterday. The gulls were fishing just as of old, and the lagoon lay placid and untroubled, blue and breezed and happy, to where the reef line whispered its eternal message to the shore.
He saw Nan on his post away to the south. He remembered the “big fish,” and a sudden respect for Nan and his power—perhaps the first dawn of a religious feeling—came into his mind. Nan had brought the cachalot into the lagoon as well as the big bream and schnapper, and as he stood by the creaming ripples on the sand, he gave a nod of his head in the direction of the gollywog as if in recognition.
Then he came plunging back through the trees. Nan had suddenly reminded him of the sapling he had cut for his elevation, and the sapling of the mast he had made for the dinghy.