“But what in the nation’s she done it for?” asked Kearney of himself, as he stood scratching his head. “What’s she up to, anyway?”
The night made no reply—only the rumble of the reef, now loud, now low, and the mysterious light of the fire, now waxing, now waning, flaring up only to die down again.
He came to the trees on the other side of the sward and watched for an hour, till at last the fire died to a spark and the spark vanished.
Then came the sound of the paddle as the dinghy stole like a beetle across the star-shot lagoon water and tied up at the bank. A figure passed along the bank towards the house. She was putting the matchbox back; then she came along towards the canoe, slipped into it and vanished from sight.
Kearney waited ten minutes. Then he stole back to the house and turned in again.
“You wait till the mornin’, and I’ll l’arn you,” said he to himself as he closed his eyes, composing his mind to slumber with the thought of the whacking in store for the Kanaka girl.
CHAPTER XI
A FIRE ON THE REEF (Continued)
Katafa, when she had arranged her hair and made her bed of blankets in the bottom of the canoe, lay down, but she did not close her eyes. She lay watching the last glow of the sunset, and then the instantly following stars held her gaze, talking to her of Karolin and the great sea spaces she had been suddenly caught away from.
The atoll island has never been adequately described by pen or brush—never will be. What brush or pen could paint the starlight on the great lagoons, the sunrises and sunsets, the vastness of the distances unbroken by any land but just the low ring of reef? Life on an atoll is like life on a raft: immensity on every side—and the sea.