The sound of the reef was loud to-night, and his mind, travelling back, caught again the sound of the rollers on that night so long ago. He could hear them still, even-spaced, solemn, funereal—yes, the Ranatonga was gone beyond any manner of doubt, Lestrange was gone like the ship, and here he was left alone with the child—and what was to be the end of it all?
Too tired for concentrated thought, the general proposition framed itself loosely and vaguely in his mind, unanswerable, expecting an answer no more than that other proposition Nature had once or twice placed before him, making him ask himself, “What are them stars?”
Then a frightful yawn sounded through the dark, the sound of someone spitting into the lagoon, and a voice, grumbling and deep, addressing itself to the gathering night.
“That bloody hooker!”
Kearney had risen. He also seemed to have shoveled all his troubles on to the back of the Ranatonga. It is a way with sailors—complaints of misfortunes on shipboard, bad food, hazing officers or Cape Horn weather are rarely addressed to the proper quarters—the ship takes it all—“That —— hooker!” If he hadn’t sailed on the Ranatonga all this wouldn’t have happened.
Dusk, almost in a moment, had turned to night, and, just as though a door had been closed, the breeze from the sea died off, leaving the lagoon water unruffled.
Right before Kearney lay the west pool, from ten to six fathoms deep, beyond which lay the broken water that made navigation to the reef so difficult. The pool lay black as ebony, ebony polished and silvered with starlight. As the sailor cast his eyes over it, he saw moving beneath the surface a long thin line of light. It was a deep-sea pala, six feet in length, narrow as a sword, a fish that rarely enters lagoon waters, and never unless at night.
This phosphorescent ghost from the outer sea circled the pool in a grand curve and then, followed by a train of silvery-golden bubbles, vanished.
At night, especially when the moon was away, you could see the lagoon fish, like ghostly shadows, beneath the water. The phosphorescence varied. To-night it was intense, and as the pala vanished, a garfish flashed along, chased by a bream thrice its size. The bream seized the garfish in a whirl of phosphorescent light.
It was like a fight between fireworks, fading off in a luminous mist. As the attacked and attacker drove farther up the pool, the mist remained for a moment, slowly fading and dispersing. It was blood.