They would know that with the wind blowing at that time the canoe would have come in this direction; he was being searched for, either to be clubbed to death, by kanakas or hanged by whites.
There lay the canoe on the beach and his footsteps on the sand.
He looked round. There was no mark of a campfire to give him away, nothing but the canoe, the footsteps, the fruit skins and coconut shells he had left lying about, and the rope.
He started to clear up, casting the skins and shells amongst the bushes. Then, diving into the bushes he hid there listening—waiting, sweating, the rope coiled by his side.
CHAPTER VII—THE BATTLE AND THE VICTORY
The island grew.
Poni at the wheel, his eyes wrinkled against the sun, steered; Aioma beside him, Le Moan near Aioma and Dick forward near the galley. Dick had taken his seat on the deck in a patch of shadow and now he was leaning on his side supporting himself with his elbow. The sight of this island that was not Karolin had completed the business for Dick.
For four days he had scarcely touched food and for four days Le Moan had watched him falling away from himself. It was like watching a tree wither.
There was a vine on Karolin that would sometimes take a tree in its embrace just as ivy does, grow up it and round it and cling without doing the tree any injury; but if the vine were cut away from the tree, the tree would die.
It seemed to Le Moan that Taori was like the tree and Katafa the vine.