“What you say is true, but Pete’son is the wisest of us. How can we find that island again without him? As you know, my life has been spent mostly among the islands—shore along and between island and island as they lie in the Paumotas ten to a space as broad as your palm. I can handle this ship or any ship like this or any canoe, as you know, but to look at the sun at noon as Pete’son looks, and to say ‘I am here, or here,’ that art has not been given me. I have not lived my life on the deep sea, but only in shallow waters. Then again Pete’son is not the full owner of this ship, there is another man who owns a part and without talking to him he cannot break a voyage, he cannot say, I will go here or here without the other man saying yes.”
“That is the more reason,” said Sru, “that we must go without him.”
“And without him we cannot find our way,” replied Rantan.
Then Sru told of Le Moan’s power of direction finding. Rantan understood at once, he had seen the thing often amongst the natives of Soma and other islands and the fact came suddenly on his mind like the blow of a hammer riveting things together.
But he said nothing to show exactly what was in his mind, he heard Sru out, and told him to go forward and not speak of the matter to any one. “For,” said Rantan, “there may be something in what you say. I do not know yet, but I will think the matter over.”
Left alone he stood, his eyes on the sun blaze creeping upon the eastern horizon. He was a quick thinker. The thing was possible, and if Karolin lagoon was a true pearl lagoon the thing was a fortune.
By taking the Kermadec there with the kanaka crew for divers, eight months or a year’s work would give the profit of twenty voyages. Well he knew that if Colin Peterson were the chief of that expedition, there would be little profit for any one but Peterson and his partner. Peterson would have to be eliminated if there was any work to be done in this business.
Sru had not said a word about Taori or Le Moan’s untruth as to Karolin being uninhabited.
It would have tangled the story for one thing, and for another might not Ra’tan say to himself. “If this girl has lied on one matter, may she not be lying about the pearls?” Sru knew instinctively that she spoke the truth, and he left it at that, and Rantan watching now the glory of the rising sun, stood, his plan crystallizing into full shape, his eyes gazing not on the sunlit sea, but on Karolin, a desolate atoll, uninhabited, with no eyes to watch what might be done there but the eyes of the seagulls.