The canoe-builder turned aft. The breezed-up blue, beyond a certain point, lay in meadows and a far glitter spoke of a great space where there was no wind.
“The wind is losing its feathers,” said Poni with a backward glance in the direction towards which the other was looking.
As he spoke the mainsail trembled again as though a shudder were running up it and the boom shifted to the cordy creak of the topping lifts.
Yes, the wind was losing its feathers, dying, jaded, exhausted; again the mainsail flattened, shivered and filled only to flatten again, the wabble of the bow wash began to die out and the schooner to lose steerage way.
The breath of Le Juan was failing and Aioma who had cursed it saw now the calm spreading towards them, passing them, taking the southern sea.
Poni left the wheel.
There was nothing to steer. A ship is only a ship when she is moving, and the schooner, now a hulk on the lift of the swell, lay with a gentle roll on the glassy water—drawing vague figures upon the sky with her trucks, complaining with the voice of block and cordage whilst the canoe-builder standing with his eyes on the north, felt the calm: felt it with a sixth sense gained from close on a century of weather influence; measured it, and knew that it was great. Great and enduring because of its extent, complete and flawless as a block of crystal placed by the gods on the face of ten thousand square miles of sea.
He remembered how he had cursed the wind, and turning to speak to Le Moan, found her gone.
Le Moan following Dick to the saloon hatch had stood for a moment listening.
Unable to hear anything below, she waited till Aioma’s back was turned and then cautiously began to descend the steps of the companion-way; cautiously, just as she had come down those steps that night to attack the white men single-handed and save, at the risk of her life, the life of Taori.