“There is nothing,” said Aioma—“yet we have come all the night and she is never wrong—not even the light in the sky. Yet by now the trees should have shown.”
Dick, gazing into the remote south at the blue and perfect and pitiless sky, unbroken at the sea line, unstained above it, drew in his breath; a cold hand seemed placed on his heart. Where then was Karolin?
“Who knows,” said Aioma, “it may show when the sun is higher. Let us wait.”
They waited and watched whilst the sun rose in the sky, but the sun revealed nothing that the dawn had not shown—nothing save away to the westward unseen by them and so faint as scarcely to be seen, a pale spot in the higher blue—the light of Karolin.
Aioma came running aft. He shook Le Moan and roused her from her sleep and she came forward and stood in the bow, sheltering her eyes against the light.
“It is not there,” said she; “I can see nothing with my eyes nor in my mind—the power has gone from me, Aioma, it has been taken from me in my sleep.”
Aioma struck his head with the flat of his hand, then he turned to her as she stood there with the lie on her lips, close to, almost touching Dick, who stood, his hand on the rail, scarcely breathing.
“Gone from you,” cried the canoe-builder, “taken in sleep, aie, what is this! We are adrift and astray, gone! And who could take it but Uta Matu. Taori, we are lost, we are in the hands of the viewless ones; their nets have taken us. I told you this, yet you would not put back. Never more shall we see Karolin.”
Dick did not move. He saw again the figure of Katafa as she stood on the beach when they were leaving, that loved figure from which he had parted with scarcely a thought, so full was he of the schooner and the dream of sailing her on the outer sea. Katafa who even then was watching for him away beneath that tiny stain on the western sky, grown so faint now as to be almost invisible.
Even last night when sure of return, his heart had longed for her, he had dreamed of her; by a thousand little threads, each living, she had joined herself to his very being, and he would never see her again!