“Doin’!” cried Kearney. “I’ve told you what she’s been doin’. Go ’n’ hunt for her in the wood if you want to know what she’s been doin’! Well you know what she’s been doin’, standin’ there like the —— Kanaka she’s turned you into and askin’ me what she’s been doin’—clear off with you!”
The boy flung down the fish and started off, running towards the trees to the right of the sward. As he vanished, Kearney heard his voice crying out in the native: “Katafa, hai amanoi Katafa, hai, hai!”
“Bloody Kanaka,” grumbled Kearney.
Katafa, deep in the gloom of the groves, heard the call but she made no answer. Her mind was in a turmoil.
Once, long ago on Karolin, a stone thrown by a child had struck her accidentally, rousing in the dark part of her mind a confusion and resentment that almost upset her reason. As in the case of Kearney, the child had been behind her, she had not seen the stone coming, and the sudden blow was as though some one had struck her with a fist. It was the same now. Though she had recognised instantly that it was only the ball that had struck her, the shock remained.
She stood for a while listening to the far-off calling of Dick. “Katafa, hai! amanoi Katafa! hai!” It grew fainter; he was taking the wrong direction and now, with the suddenness of a clapped door, silence cut him off.
That was a trick of the woods caused maybe by the upward trend of the land; a person calling to you and moving away in a horizontal direction would suddenly be cut off.
Katafa had never been alone in the woods before this; she had always gone accompanied by either the boy or Kearney. Never had she grown accustomed to these vast masses of trees, their gloom, their congregated perfumes, the strange lights and shadows made by the moving branches and fronds, the sense of being surrounded; always amongst them the great distances of the atoll cried louder to her to come back, and the heartache and homesickness grew more intense.
But to-day she had lost her fear of the trees, and the call of Karolin had lost for a while its power. The outrage committed by Kearney had shaken her away from all other considerations, all other pictures but that of the first man who had struck her.
She moved away to the right and entered an alley formed by a double line of matamata trees. Ferns grew here on either side, and above in the liquid gloom cables of liantasse swung, powdered with starry blossoms.