“They will return,” said he, “Aioma is with them and they can come to no harm—they will return before the sun has found the sea or maybe when he rises from it we will see them sailing towards Karolin. Peace, Katafa, we will watch for them, you and I. Go now and sleep and I will wait and watch, and if I see them I will come running to you, and when I sleep you can wait and watch and so with our eyes we will draw them back to us.”
Katafa, whose tears had ceased, heaved a deep sigh. She rose and stood, her eyes fixed on the coral at her feet. Weary from want of sleep, she listened to the words of Kanoa as a child might listen, then, without looking once towards the sea, she passed away towards the trees.
Kanoa stood, his gaze fixed on the sea line, and from then through the hours and the days the eyes of the lovers watched and waited for the return of those who had gone “but a little way.”
CHAPTER VII—ISLANDS AT WAR—THE OPEN SEA
Something beside curiosity and the spirit of adventure had made Dick decide to push on towards Marua (Palm Tree).
The truth is Marua was calling to him. He wished to see it again if only for a moment. The hilltop and the groves and the coloured birds sent their voices across the sea to Karolin just as Karolin had sent its appeal across the sea to Katafa when Katafa had lived at Palm Tree.
As a matter of fact those two islands were for ever at war in the battle ground of the human mind. In the old days natives of Karolin had gone to live on Marua, and Karolin had pursued them and brought them back, filling their minds with regret and longing and pictures of the great sea spaces and free sea beaches of Karolin. In the same way natives of Marua had gone to live on Karolin and Marua had pursued them and brought them back, filling their minds with regret for the trees, the hilltop and the blue ring of the lagoon.
Between Dick and Katafa there was only one faint suspicion of a dividing line, something that might increase with the years and make unhappiness the difference between Marua and Karolin: the pull of the two environments so vastly different, the call of the high island and the call of the atoll, of the land of Dick’s youth and the land of the youth of Katafa.
It is extraordinary how the soul of man can be pulled this way and that way by things and forms that seem inanimate and yet can talk—aye, and express themselves in the most beautiful poetry, strike in their own defence through the arms of men, follow without moving though the pursued be half a world away, and inspire a love as lasting as the love that a man or woman can inspire.
The love of a range of hills, what battles has it not won, and the view of a distant cloud, to what lengths may it not raise the soul of man—heights far above the plain where philosophy crawls, heights beyond the reach of thought.