She had forgotten the guiding sign placed long ago above the great lagoon by God, whose garden is Nature and whose rivers are the currents of the sea. Dick, perhaps divining her trouble by that subtle sense which enabled them to communicate without words, leaned sideways towards her as he steered and, letting the boat a few points off her course, pointed to where, far ahead, the light of the great lagoon formed its wan, miraculous window in the sky.
CHAPTER XL
THE BIRTH OF A SEA KING
They had with them food and water enough for a week. Dick had left little to chance. When a tiny child, he had almost frightened Kearney by putting the fish away in the shadow of the thwart to prevent the sun from spoiling it, and this natural ability for dealing with things, which had been a gift from his parents, had not been decreased by life on the island.
Now, with all he had ever known taken away from him by distance, facing a new world and the unknown sea, this ability to deal with things showed itself in his fearlessness and absolute confidence in himself, the boat and the course they were steering.
By noon they had been twelve hours on their journey, making two and a half knots against the current. Thirty miles to the north lay Palm Tree, whilst in the south, like a beacon, the forty-mile lagoon of Karolin signalled to them from the blue; and now, as it drew towards sunset, Katafa, who had fallen asleep, awoke and, sitting up, seemed listening as though to catch the sound of something she had heard in her dreams.
There was nothing, nothing but the slap of the bow wash and the creak of the mast and the lapping of the long swell as it kissed the planks, nothing but the cry of a gull that passed them. It was flying south.
Yet still she listened, resting her head against the gunnel, her eyes fixed on the space of sky beneath the sail. Nothing.
Then, as the sun, now far down in the west, was reaching to the sea that boiled up in gold to meet him, Katafa raised her head.
Dick heard it now, a faint, far breathing, a murmur that came and passed and came again, a voice that was not the wind.