The water off Karolin is a mile deep; then the soundings vary towards the bank, the floor of the sea rising in terrace-like steps to within forty fathoms of the surface.
Neither Katafa nor her companion spoke, or only a word now and then. Steering an outriggered curve required attention, for if the outrigger dips too deep there may be disaster; as for Taiofa, he was busy overhauling the tackle, the anchor which was simply a chipped lump of coral, and the mooring rope.
The Spanish ship had been a blessing to Karolin. Before burning and scuttling, the natives had looted her. The rope Taiofa was handling had been made from part of her running rigging unwoven and retwisted, the fishing hooks beaten out of some of her metal. Having placed everything in order, he crouched, brooding, his eyes fixed on the last tinge of sunset, and then raised to the outjetting stars.
A three-days-old moon hung, half tilted, like a boat rising on a steep wave, its light trickling on the swell and turning the outrigger spume to silver. A last fishing gull passed them making for the land, and now, as though assured of their position by chart, compass, and sounding lead, the sail was hailed and the anchor dropped, the canoe riding to it bow to swell.
Whilst the boy fished, the girl watched, a heavy maul beside her for the stunning of the palu when caught; from far away, and borne on the wind, came the voice of the reef, a confused indefinite murmur from the vastness of the night, answered only by the slap of the water on the planking as the northward-running current strained the anchor line.
An hour passed, during which the fisherman hauled in a few small schnappers whilst the girl, perched now on the pole of the outrigger, watched the seas go by flowing up out of the night ahead and passing in long rhythmical columns of swell, star-shot and rippling on the anchor rope; the schnappers lay where they were cast, like bars of silver leaping now and again to life, whilst on the wind the invisible beach of Karolin still sent the murmur of the breakers on the coral.
“The palu are not,” said Taiofa, “but—who knows?—they may come before dawn.”
“Better then than not at all,” said the girl, “but it is not the palu, O he, Taiofa; we should have waited for a bigger moon.”
The fisherman made no reply and the girl relapsed into herself in a silence broken only by the far-off beach.
Hours passed and then at last came the reward, the line ran out and the boy, calling to the girl to steady the canoe, hauled whilst the great fish fought, now darting ahead till the bow overran the anchor rope, now zigzagging astern. Now they could see it fighting below the surface and now thrashing the starlit water to foam; it was nearly alongside, and Taiofa was shouting to his companion to get ready to strike, when of a sudden the night went black; the squall was on them.