The Garden of God

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Alone with the women and the children and the crabs of the beach, he who had always led the fight and directed the rowers and dispensed the laws of Karolin for sixty long years! Alone, and useless as the smallest child! Uta had been a hard and stern ruler, merciless to enemies, yet just according to his lights. He had known three gods—himself, Nanawa, the shark-toothed one, and Nan of the cocoanuts.

He had only worshipped the first.

Just as a clever man believes in ghosts without letting the belief interfere in the least with his renting a house supposed to be haunted, Uta believed in his co-gods without letting his belief worry him much.

Even if the verdict of Le Juan had been against the expedition, it is highly probable that he would have sent it off all the same; his fighting instincts had been roused and the death of his grandson, Sru, had vexed his soul.

Having sat for a while contemplating the ripples breaking on the sand and the gulls flighting above the water, the king of Karolin called to his women to carry him back to his house.

That night the great hot wind from the south blew, and whilst Laminai and his men were slaughtering each other and the waves were roaring on the reef of Karolin, Le Juan, full of kava and the fear that Nanawa had taken it into his head to play them some dirty trick, instead of running straight, was clinging to a tree before the house of the king, shouting that Karolin was triumphant and her enemies slain, that Nanawa was riding the great south wind, hastening to fight with the men of Karolin.

Then came the peaceful morning, and after that came the next day, and the next, and a week passed, and a fortnight, and still the men of Karolin did not return, and still another fortnight.

Uta would cause himself to be carried on his litter down to the canoe houses and there, resting and reviewing things, he would gaze into the great half-lit interiors of the houses where the long canoes had once rested. He could see the ridge poles and the thatch of the roofs, the rollers and the tackle that had once held the canoes. The great hot wind, broken by a cocoanut grove, had left the houses almost undamaged, but the canoes—where were they? “Of what use are the houses without the canoes?” Uta would say to himself. “Or of what use is life without the men who made the life of Karolin—and my son, Laminai, and my grandsons, where are they?”

He ordered three women to take a fishing canoe and start for the north, find Palm Tree, and see what they could see, but never to come back unless they brought news of the missing ones; and the three women he chose were the wives of Talia, Manua and Leopa, the three men who had been with Sru and who had brought the news of his death to Karolin.

The three wretched women started with food enough for four days and they never came back. Weeks vanished, the days flighting from east to west like gorgeous birds, born in purple dawns and vanishing in amber sunsets, but no word came—nothing but the voice of the bearded sea mumbling on the reef, and the wind in the coco-palms, and the challenge of the gulls.