“How can she hurt us?”
“It is not she. It is Le Juan, the wicked one, whose blood is in her.”
To Aioma, as I have said before, people were not dead as they are with us, only removed to a distance, and though he might speak of Spirits, he spoke of people removed out of sight, yet still potent.
He did not believe that Uta Matu could use a real net or spear against Dick, but he did believe that the dead king of Karolin and his witch woman could, in some way, stretch through the distance to lay nets and strike with spears. Ghostly spears and nets not meant for the body, but the man.
If you could have pierced deeper into the mind of Aioma you would have found the belief—never formulated in words—that a man’s body was just like the shell of a hermit crab, a thing that could be thrown off, crept out of, discarded. Uta Matu when called into the distance had discarded his shell, but the man and his power remained—at a distance.
“I fear neither Le Juan nor Uta Matu,” said Dick, and as he spoke the air suddenly vibrated to the clang of a bell.
CHAPTER VIII—WE SHALL NOT SEE MARUA AGAIN
It was the ship’s bell.
Tahuku had struck it in idleness, just as a child might, but the unaccustomed sound coming just then seemed to Aioma a response to the words of the other. But he said nothing. Taori had chosen his path and he must pursue it.
At noon the northern horizon still showed clear and unbroken by any sign of land, yet still the wind blew strong and still the schooner sped like a gull before it.