But Kanoa was only eighteen and Le Moan for all her dark beauty and brooding ways and mysterious habits was, at all events, fashioned in the form of a girl, and once in a roll of the ship Le Moan slipping on the spray-wet deck would have fallen, only for Kanoa who caught her, almost naked as she was, in his arms, and she was delicious.
Ghost or not there began to grow in him a desire for her that was held in check only by his fear of her. A strange condition of mind brought about by the conflict of two passions.
To-night close to her on the deserted deck, the warm air bringing her perfume to him and her body outlined against the starlit lagoon, he was only prevented from seizing her in his arms by the thought of Sru and his companions dead on the reef over there; dead as Pete’son, dead as he—Kanoa—might be to-morrow, and through the wiles of this girl so like a spirit, this spirit so like a girl.
He felt like a man swimming against the warm current that sweeps round the shoulder of Haraikai, swimming bravely and seeming to make good way, yet all the time being swept steadily out to sea to drown and die.
Suddenly—and just as he was about to fling out his hands, seize her and capture her in a burning embrace, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, and arms locked round her body—suddenly the initiative was taken from him and Le Moan, gliding up to him, placed a hand upon his shoulder.
Next moment she had pressed him down to the deck and he was squatting opposite to her, almost knee to knee, love for the moment forgotten.
Forgotten even though, leaning forward and placing her hand on his shoulder, she brought her face almost in touch with his.
“Kanoa,” said Le Moan, in a voice just audible to him above the rumble of the reef, “Sru and the men who were with him have been slain by Rantan, and the big red man, not by the men of Karolin. To-morrow you will die, I heard him say so to the big man, you and Timau and Tahuku and Poni and Nauta and Tirai.” She told this lie with steady eyes fixed upon him, eyes that saw nothing but Taori, the man whose life she was trying to save. No wonder that love dropped out of the heart of Kanoa and that the sweat showed on his face in the starlight. It was the first time that she had spoken to him more than a word or two, and what she said in that swift clear whisper passed through him like a sword. He believed her. His fear of her was the basis of his belief. He was listening to the voice of a spirit, not the voice of a girl.
He who a moment ago had been filled with passionate desire, felt now that he was sitting knee to knee with Death.
Such was the conviction carried by her words and voice that he would have risen up and run away and hidden, only that he could not move.