Awakening with the first beam of light, she had heard vague and far-away sounds, sounds caught and repeated by the echoes of the hated woods—the woods that had imprisoned her once, that seemed in league against her again—the woods she had always hated, that had always hated her, barring her from the freedom she craved for and the wide spaces that were part of her soul.
Karolin was calling and the sea was open and the boat was there ready; nothing was wanting but the dark of the next night, and just in that first clear minute of waking from sleep, with her arm around the man she loved, came a sense of oppression, imprisonment and evil—the woods.
The vision of the copra traders and the great canoe guarding the lagoon was almost forgotten. The sense of hate and imprisonment came from the trees, and maybe in that waking moment her mind had glimpsed the core of things, for it was the trees that had brought the traders.
Then came the far-away sounds: shouts and vague, indefinite noises heard through the movement of the wind in the leaves, now dying to nothing, now more clear and purposeful, almost like the sound of pursuit—it was the sound of search.
The copra traders were combing the groves. The remains of the canoes broken on the beach had given them pause before taking full possession of the place, and they wished to see what might possibly be lurking amidst the trees.
Even as Dick listened, the sounds grew clearer. They would die away as though finished and done with, and then they would break out, of a sudden, closer. There is nothing more deceptive than the trees with their dense patches, their winding runways, their echo-haunted dells, their draughts and stillnesses. Sound enters here like a runner and gets lost, and goes far or fails or drops dead, according to the road it takes, according to the wind it meets, or the absence of wind.
A shout came from the sward. Dick parted the leaves and there, running across the sward towards the house, was a man, a red-bearded man, gun in hand.
Four others came after him, brown and naked, with frizzy black beards, and Dick, whose piercing eyes noted everything, saw the marks on their bodies, marks of old wounds and ringworm sores.
He stooped and picked up the coral-headed club he had found that day on the eastern beach and, resting his hands lightly on it, continued to watch.
They made for the house and surrounded it whilst the red-bearded man went in. Dick could see him inside looking here and there at the shelves, at the walls, and round on the floor as if searching for trace of the owners; then he came out and the whole party disappeared into the grove to the left.