Here the girl felt herself suddenly shut in, the groves rising to the hill-top fretted her spirit, the bit of lagoon was nothing, and even the reef was different from the reef of Karolin. Kearney had raised something deep down in her mind against him and he seemed somehow now the centre and core of all her trouble. Dick she scarcely thought of; he, like other human beings, was of little account to her.
Thoughts came to her of trying to get the canoe out and escaping back to the freedom which was the only thing she loved, but it was hopeless. She could never do the business single-handed; she was trapped and she knew it.
Now, when Le Juan wanted help from Nanawa, the shark-toothed god, she had several methods of invoking the deity. One of the simplest was by fire. She would go off, build a little fire and, as she fed it, repeat over it a formula, always the same string of words representing the wish of her heart, which was never spoken.
Something generally happened after that. Sometimes the wish would be granted, long overdue rain would come, or some enemy already dying would die, or the palu that had forsaken for a while the palu bank would come back.
But the shark-toothed one was a tricky deity and had a habit of sending other gifts along by way of Laggniappe.
For instance, in that great drought long years ago, Le Juan had sacrificed stacks of fuel to the god, and weeks after he had sent the rain, but he also sent the Spanish ship with Katafa on board of it, and Katafa had given Le Juan a lot of trouble and heart-searching.
Again, two years ago, he had sent the palu back to the bank but at the same time he had extended the season in the lagoon when the fish were poisonous by a fortnight.
Sometimes he was quite amiable and would cure an indigestion without killing the patient as well—but it was all a toss-up. He was a dark force, and even Le Juan recognised in a dim way that she was playing with evil, and was never easy till the effects of her invocations were over and done with.
Katafa had often helped to stoke the little fires and she knew the ritual in all its simplicity. The thing had never interested her much till now.
Maybe Nanawa could help her, take the island away or knock it to pieces without hurting her, or lift it like a dish cover to the sky as she had seen it lifted by mirage, or free her in some way—any way.