Dick at the steering paddle saw a figure on the northern beach as they drew near. It was Katafa, waiting for him, the wind blowing her girdle of dracæna leaves and her hand sheltering her eyes against the sun. Standing just as Le Moan was standing on the southern beach sheltering her eyes and watching the canoe that carried the first man who had ever made her turn her head.
Some children were playing near Katafa and a fishing canoe was putting out near by, but he saw only Katafa.
“Katafa,” said Aioma, who was crouched by the after outrigger pole. “It is she sure enough, and they said she was dead and that her ghost had returned bringing you with her, Taori, but the dead do not return. Katafa, she was the girl under the taboo of Taminan, the girl no man or woman might touch, and then one day she went fishing beyond the reef and a storm took her and she was drowned, so they said.”
“She was not drowned,” replied Dick. “The wind blew her to Marua where I was—I and another whose face I have near forgotten, Kearney, he was called, and he made canoes but not like these, then one day he went among the trees and did not return. Then the god Nan came to the island and after him the men of Karolin who fought together so that all were killed, and then came the bad men as I have told you and would have killed us but we left Marua in the night.... Look, there is the canoe we came in.” He pointed to the dinghy hauled up on the beach.
“O he! Taori!” It was Katafa’s voice hailing them from the shore, glad, sweet, clear as a bell, yet far-carrying as the voice of a gull.
As Dick sprang out on the sands he seized her in his arms; parted only a few hours, it seemed to them that they had been weeks apart.
In the old days, even before he was born, his mother Emmeline had never been at ease when separated from his father even by the breadth of the lagoon, the demon that hints of mischance seemed always at her ear.
Dick seemed to have inherited with his power of love for Katafa, something of the dread of mischance for the beloved.
He embraced her, heedless of onlookers, though the only eyes to see were the eyes of the children and of Aioma who had eyes for nothing but the dinghy.
As soon as his foot touched sand, the canoe-builder made for it running like a boy, clapped his hand on the gunnel and then ran it over the planking.