Without losing its alertness on the touch of the wheel her mind had gone off for a momentary flight. She saw herself steering the Kermadec towards Karolin, she saw in imagination the distant reef, the gulls and the thrilling blue of the great lagoon beyond the reef opening.
Peterson, without coming further on deck, watched her for a moment without comprehending anything but the fact that the girl had been allowed to take the wheel. Then as Sru took the spokes from her and pushed her forward, the captain of the Kermadec turned on Rantan, but the abuse on his lips was half shrivelled by the face of the mate.
“Don’t you never do a thing like that again,” said Peterson. “Dam’ tomfoolery.” He snorted and went forward, kicked a kanaka out of his way and then stood, his eyes fixed on the distant vision of Levua opal tinted in the blue, blue north.
CHAPTER X—THE HIGH ISLAND
They came in on a dying wind, the outlying reefs creaming to the swell and the great high island opening its cañons and mountain glades as they drew towards it pursued by the chanting gulls.
Le Moan, who had never seen a high island or only the vision of Palm Tree uplifted by mirage, stood with her eyes fixed on the multitude of the trees. Palms, breadfruit, tree ferns, aoas, sandalwood groves, trees mounting towards the skies, reaching ever upwards, changing in form and misted by the smoke of torrents.
Here there was no freedom, the great spaces of the sea had vanished, Levua like an ogre had seized her mind and made it a prisoner.
For the first time in her life something came to her heart, terrible as her grief for the loss of Taori, yet even more far searching and taking its bitterness from the remote past as well as the present. It was the homesickness of the atoll-bred islander encompassed by the new world of the high island; of the caged gull taken from the freedom of the wind and the sea.
At Karolin you could see the sun from his rising to his setting, and the stars from sea line to sea line; the reef rose nowhere to more than twice the height of a man, the sea was a glittering plain of freedom and a sound and a scent.
Worse even than the monstrous height of Levua, its strange cañons and gloomy woods, was the scent of the foliage, cossi and vanilla and sandalwood, unknown flowers, unknown plants, all mixed with the smell of earth and breathing from the glasshouse atmosphere of the groves.