They would search the atoll, they would hunt amongst the bushes—yet they might miss him.
Should they find him! His dark mind took fire at the thought, wild ideas came to him of escaping into the lagoon, boarding the schooner, seizing a rifle and turning the situation. He was a white man, a match for a hundred kanakas if only he could get a foothold above them, a rifle in his hands. In this he was right, as he had slain the women who had him safely bound, so had he the possibility in him to meet this last attack of fate, free himself, and dominating and destroying, make good at last.
Time passed, the reef spoke and the wind in the trees, but from the outer sea came nothing. He peeped through the bushes, getting a view of the reef line to northward. By now surely the topmasts of the schooner ought to show close in as she must be, yet there was nothing.
He came out of the bushes like a lizard, stood erect and then came cautiously towards the higher coral where his outlook post was; literally on hands and feet he crawled, inch by inch, till the sea came in view and then he crawled no longer. He stood erect.
Far off on the breezed-up sea the schooner close-hauled was standing away from the island.
Rantan could scarcely grasp the fact before his eyes. She had been making for him and now she was standing away.
She had not been searching for him, then. Was she after all the Kermadec or had he been mistaken?
Her shape, her personality, that patch on the sail—well what of that? Other ships had patched canvas besides his schooner. He had surely been mistaken.
As she dwindled dissolving in the wind, his hungry eyes followed her.
How fast she was going, faster than the Kermadec could sail close-hauled.