Dick sculled under her direction, using the oars with a will, and, vastly intrigued with this new game of attracting big fish, he half expected to see them coming after the boat or coming up the lagoon, lured by this strange bait. Nothing appeared, however; the dinghy passed unfollowed down the long arm of the lagoon, passed the break and the vision of blazing sea beyond, reached the southern part of the reef, and tied up.
The wind was fresh this morning and the waves on the outer beach of the reef came in curving and clear as if cut from aquamarine, bursting in snow and thunder, sheeting over the coral and sucking back only to form and burst again. The breeze brought the spray and the mewing of the gulls and the scent of a thousand square leagues of sea. Katafa, her hair blowing in the wind, stood for a moment looking south—south, where Karolin lay—the great lagoon, in its forty-mile clip of reef, sending its fume and song to the sky, and the sun making haze of the distances.
Then she turned to Dick, who was standing beside her, supporting Nan.
He could not tell yet how the bait was to be used. With the common sense born in him from his father, he was beginning to suspect the whole business as being unpractical. However, he said nothing, and when she began to search about for a crack in the coral or some convenient hole to take the base of the sapling, he helped. They found one some three feet deep, erected the pole, secured it from rocking with lumps of loose coral and sand, and then stood to look at their work. The thing was hideous, fantastic and stamped with the seal of the South Seas. The breeze blew the frill on the thing’s head and, as the sapling swayed slightly in the wind, the grotesque and grinning head seemed nodding towards Karolin.
“Ehu!” cried Dick. “But how will that bring the big fish?”
“They will come from there,” said Katafa, pointing south.
Dick looked towards the south. He saw nothing but sea, gulls and sky. Then he turned to the dinghy, the girl following him.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MONTHS PASS
Under the sea surface lies a world ruled by laws of which we know little or nothing. We know that the shoals have roads that they follow, and that some master law keeps the balance so that the ocean’s population is checked and restrained to certain limits; that the palu change their feeding ground for some mysterious reason, and that for some other reason equally mysterious the lagoons are poisoned periodically so that the fish become uneatable; but no man knows how or why the poisoner uses his art, or why, as in the instance of Palm Tree, some lagoons are immune.