The Gates of Morning

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

“It is even as it was in my dream,” cried he, “but greater and more beautiful, and she is ours, Taori, and we will take her beyond the reef—e manta Tia kau—and we will fill her sails with the wind; she will eat the wind, there will be no wind left for canoes in all the islands.” As he chattered and ran about, every now and then his face would turn to port as though he were looking for something. It was the obsession of the outrigger. You will remember that even in his dream when half an inch high he had helped to work the model across the rock pool, the dream ship had developed an outrigger; it was so now. The outrigger had so fixed itself in his mind, owing to ancestral and personal experience, as part of the make-up of a sailing craft that Aioma could not escape from the idea of it.

There was something wanting. Reason told him that there was nothing wanting, that the schooner had beam and depth enough to stand up to the wind and sea without capsizing—all the same every now and then, when facing the bow, he was conscious that on his left-hand side there was something wanting, something the absence of which as a stabilizer made him feel insecure.

Dick, having glanced at the compass in the binnacle, of which he could make nothing, turned his attention to the wheel. He had never seen a wheel of any sort before and he had no idea of the use of this strange contrivance. Kearney’s ships were all rigged with tillers. Aioma was equally mystified.

“Le Moan will know,” said he, “and the men she brought with her. But look, Taori.”

He was standing by the saloon hatch and pointing down. He was brave enough on deck, but, like Le Moan, the interior of the schooner daunted him. He had never gone down stairs in his life, nor seen a step, neither had Dick.

The peep down the stairway, the mat below, the vague light through the saloon doorway fascinated Dick without frightening him, and, leaving the other to keep the deck, he came down cautiously, step by step, pausing now and then to listen.

In the saloon he stood looking about him at the handiwork of a civilization of which he knew nothing. The place was in disorder, nothing had been put straight since the fight that still existed in evidence. Bunk-bedding was tossed about, a water bottle lay smashed on the floor by the clothes that once had belonged to Rantan and Carlin. He noticed the telltale compass and the attachments of the swinging lamp, that had been brought on deck, the chairs, the door of the after cabin, the glass of the skylight and portholes, the table on which Rantan had held down Le Moan, the rifles in the rack and the two rifles used by the beachcomber and his companion standing in a corner cleaned and waiting for the deadly work which Le Moan had frustrated.

The smell of the place came to him. The vague odour of sandalwood from the cargo piercing bulkheads and planking, the smell of stale tobacco smoke, fusty bunk-bedding and the trade schooner smell that hinted of cockroaches and coconut oil gone rancid. It seemed part of the place and the place after the first few moments began to repel him.

What came to him through the sense of smell and sight was in fact a waft from the closed spaces of the cities of which he knew nothing, from the men who labour and construct and live and trade crowded like ants under roofs, shut out from the sun and stars and winds of God.

He drew slowly back as though the environment were clinging to him and holding him—but in his hand there was a rifle. Close to him, in the corner by the door, he had seized hold of it. His piercing sight had taken in the shape of the thing used by Rantan in the boat, the thing that spoke so loud and killed at such a distance, and now, seeing the death-dealer so close to his hand, he could not resist it.