“We will go back,” went on Sru, “you and I and another man, and perhaps more, all good men who will not hurt Taori—but Pete’son, no—no,” he murmured as if communing with some dark spirit. “He would swallow all. He alone knows the way across the sea, so that setting the steering paddle this way or that he can go straight as the frigate bird to Soma or to Nalauka or to what island or land he chooses, he alone of the men on board this ship. But thou art wise as he. Wise as the frigate bird that leaves the land far from sight yet can return. You will guide us to Karolin. Can your eyes still see that beach and where it lies?”
Le Moan threw out her arms.
“Though I were blind as the sand worm, I could find it,” said Le Moan, “through night and storm—but when?”
“No man can hurry the rising of the day,” said Sru, “but soon it will come and soon your eyes shall fall upon Taori—that which lies behind your left ear has told me, and it has told me more. Answer so that I may know if it speak the truth. It has told me that thick in that lagoon lie the shells of the iyama (oyster) from whence it came—is that true talk?”
“Thick and far they lie,” said Le Moan, “from the kaaka far as one can paddle from the coming in to the middle of the tide.”
“So,” said Sru, “it spoke the truth. When we make our return you will go to meet Taori and we to find the iyama for the sake of the stones they hold, brethren of that which lies ... there.”
He touched her hair behind her left ear and rose gliding off aft, whilst Le Moan, whose life had suddenly come back to her, sat gazing through night and beyond the stars at a sunlit beach where spear in hand and lovely as the morning stood Taori.
Taori who at that moment tired out with the labour of canoe-building was lying asleep with his arm across the warm body of Katafa.
CHAPTER VIII—THE MIND OF SRU
Now the mind of Sru had sat down to talk with Le Moan, having in it no plan—nothing but a desire for pearls and what pearls would bring, and the knowledge sure and instinctive that Karolin was a pearl lagoon. It had risen up armed with a plan.