Then as Dick struggled to his feet and stood with his hand on the rail, dazed and with his face turned again to the south, the old man recommenced his plaint with the insistency of a brute, whilst the wind blew and Poni at the wheel kept the ship on her course south, ever towards the hopeless south.
“No,” said Aioma, “never more shall we see Karolin. Uta has us in his net. Never more shall I shape my logs (he had dropped that business before leaving Karolin) or spear the big fish by night whilst the boys hold the torches (upoli), and the great eels will go through the water with none to catch them. It is this ayat that has brought us where we now are to confusion and a sea without measure, and this wind, which is the breath of Le Juan, and may her breath be accursed. Well, Taori, and so it stands, and what now? Shall we go before the wind or counter it—seek the south e Haya where nothing is, or the east e Hola where nothing is?”
Dick turned his face to the canoe builder. “I do not know, Aioma, I do not know. It is all darkness.” His eyes turned to Le Moan and passed her, falling on Poni at the wheel, and the sea beyond.
Aioma had told him that he was taking Le Moan as a pathfinder, but Dick had troubled little about that, scarcely believing in it. He had trusted to the current and the light of Karolin as a guide. They were gone, but it was the words of Aioma that removed the last vestige of hope.
He trusted Aioma in all sea matters and when Aioma said that they were lost, they were lost indeed. Palm Tree vanished, Karolin gone, nothing but the sea, the trackless hopeless sea and the words of Aioma!
Urged by a blind instinct to get away from the sight of that sea, that sky, that pitiless sun, he left the deck and came down the steps to the saloon where he stood, a strange figure, almost nude, against the commonplace surroundings; the table, the chairs, the bunks with their still disordered bedding, the mirror let into the forward bulkhead, a mirror so old and dim and spotted that it scarcely cast a reflection.
He looked about him for a moment, moved towards the bunk where Carlin had once slept, and, sitting down on the edge of it, leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, his head bowed; just as his father had sat long, long years ago when Emmeline had vanished into the woods to return bearing a child in her arms—bearing him, Taori.
Just as his father had sat all astray, crushed, helpless and lost, so he sat now, and for the same reason.
Up on deck Poni at the wheel turned to the canoe-builder.
“And what now, Aioma,” said Poni, “since Le Moan knows not where to go, where go we?” As he spoke the mainsail trembled, rippled, and flattened again.