“Then eat it raw,” said he, angry with her, and off he went.
Taori was the name she had given him.
When he had gone she took the skull which she had been hiding and placed it beside her. Then she lay down with her eyes fixed on the ruddy-tinted light of the sunset visible through the spaces of the leaves.
There was no moon that night, and a dead calm had set in an hour before sunset. The heat was oppressive. Even the great Pacific seemed drugged and drowsy, and the sound of the surf on the reef like the breathing of a sleeper uneasy in his sleep.
Kearney, awaking about midnight, came out for a breath of air. It was almost as oppressive out of doors as in the house, and above the trees the sky, heavy with stars, stood like the roof of a jewelled oven. The fronds of a palmetto by the water stood without a tremor and the lagoon lay like a fallen sky of stars, tremorless as space itself.
Kearney came down to the bank and sat bathing his feet in the water, the ripples waving out and shattering the reflected firmament. He heard the rustle of robber crabs feeding on the fallen drupes of a pandanus near by, the splash of a heavy fish beyond the cape of wild cocoanut, the fall of a nut from the grove behind the house, the fret and murmur of the reef—no other sound from land and sea and all that wilderness of stars.
Then, as he lay on his elbow yawning and half asleep, a spark of light that was not a star struck his sight. It was on the reef line. It died out, came to life again, flickered and grew. Some one was lighting a fire on the reef. He sat up, glanced at the dinghy lying safely at her moorings, then out away at the far-off fire.
“She ain’t taken the boat,” said he to himself. “She must have got over smimmin’, curse that Kanaka! What trick is she up to anyway, signalling? That’s what she’s after—signalling. That’s her game, maybe to bring a hive of niggers atop of us.”
He rushed off to see if the box of matches had been taken; no, it was there, but he knew she could light a fire with a fire-stick. She had taught Dick to do it. He came running back to the dinghy, got in, unmoored her, and pushed out.
He had always had it in his mind that the fire she had lit long ago was a signal made to attract her people, whoever they might be.