He was master of all the sounds of his world. The island was always talking to him—the reef and the sea. Here was something new and unknown and inimical.
It came from the eastern beach, that beach which faced the gateway to the world beyond. The sound ceased, the echoes died, and the night reserved its silence. Dick, still listening without a movement, heard the reef speaking to the first waves of the ebb, the fall of a leaf on the roof, and the furtive sound of a robber crab by the house wall on the right. Then, rising, he came out into the moonlight, moving silently as his own shadow.
A fish spear was standing against the house wall. He took it and came along by the trees, listening, pausing every now and then, seeming to scent the air like a hound. Nothing. He turned his face towards the lagoon. Nothing. The great mirror lay unruffled to the reef, and beyond the reef the sea stars shone paled by the moonlight but steadfast and untroubled.
The island said to him: “There is nothing here at all but the things you have always known. That voice was the voice of some sea beast that came like the big fish and has gone.”
Yet still he listened.
Ah, what was that? A branch stirred and, turning, he saw, like a ghost amidst the trees, Katafa.
She was standing, the moonlight on her face and her arms outstretched. Next moment she had turned, vanished, and he was in pursuit. The woods, one vast green glow under the moon, were lit almost as brilliantly as by day, and as she ran he could see, now a glossy shoulder, now her whole form, now nothing but swaying leaves above which the convolulus flowers seemed the bugles of aerial huntsmen joining in the chase.
He was not hunting alone. The woods to-night were full of armed men, men who at the sound of the conch had spread and entered the groves like a bunch of shadows, beating the trees and glades, dumb as hounds when hot on the scent.
The line Katafa had taken was towards these. Pitcher plants cascaded their water as she ran dashing them aside, and branches foiled him as he pursued; great perfumed flowers hit him in the face. Now he had almost seized her, and now she was gone, saved by a branch or tangle of liana.
The trees broke to a glade carpeted with slippery moss spread like a snare to betray her. Crossing it, she fell. She was his, he flung himself upon her, and fell on the hard ground. He had not even touched her. By a last miracle she had saved herself and was gone, doubling back through the trees.