The Garden of God

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

She saw in the boat the answer of Nanawa, the evil god who was to play her one last trick, for, as the prow dashed on the sand, and as though the god had suddenly stripped a curtain aside, she saw Katafa.

Ah, the spirit of prophecy had not been denied to her those long years ago when, urging Uta Matu to destroy the child, she saw in her the agent of revenge for the murdered papalagi. Katafa, who had brought Taiofa to his death and Sru, Laminai, and all the men of Karolin. Katafa, who had destroyed half a nation to re-create it. Katafa, who had vanished to return, a woman beautiful like a star risen from the sea.

She saw nothing else, neither Taori, who stood on the sands beside the girl, nor the people, who had surged back as the cry rang along the beach: “Katafa, from the dead she has returned, Katafa!”

She saw neither the boat that the lagoon waves were driving broadside on to the sand, nor the lagoon, nor the sky beyond; like a beast the spirit that had dwelt with her always swelled and seized her and shook her and spoke, spoke in words that were strange and unknown as though it had flung human speech aside for the language of the devils.

Then, as though the great hand that had used her was crushing her and dropping her, she fell, and with her the power of Nanawa for ever.

The sun was near his setting, and in the evening light Nan stood on his post erected by the house of Uta, once king of Karolin, and in the house, dimly to be seen, were the little ships of Taori, toys of the long ago, symbols now of the sea power that he dreamed of vaguely as he stood in the sunset on the reef with Katafa, and facing the line of the empty canoe houses.

Only yesterday he had stood armed with the pasht by the dead body of Le Juan whilst the people, listening to the words of Katafa, proclaimed him their chief; yet by this evening he had visited the canoe houses and had sent fisher-boys to the southern beach to fetch Aioma, Falia and Tafuta, the three old men, too old for war, but canoe-builders all of them, and holding between them the secret of the construction of the great war canoes.

For to Dick, standing with uptilted chin before the women and the children and the boys who, with the sure instinct of children and women and boys, had seen in him their ruler, a vision had come, God-sent, of the world that lay beyond the world he knew. He had seen again Ma in the moonlight, and the spear of Laminai, the red-bearded man he had put to death, and, the black-bearded man chased through the woods, the burning schooner and the ape-men who still held the beach of Palm Tree; and as he looked on Katafa, on the women and helpless children, on the boys growing towards war age but still unripe, the great knowledge came to him, as it came to the earliest men who fronted the wolf, that strength is possession, and that without possession love is a mockery—that dreams based on unreality are dreams.

They turned from the canoe houses and came along the reef. Here, on the outer beach, the village far behind them, they sat down to rest.

It was the first time they had found themselves alone since leaving Palm Tree. All last night the village had hummed around them, bonfires burning all along the coral and bonfires answering from the southern beach, conch answering conch, whilst the great stars watched and the breakers thundered as they had thundered at the coming of Uta Matu to power, of Uta Maru, his father, and all the line of the kings of Karolin stretching to the remote past, but never beyond the voice of the sea.