“What you set us to do we will do,” said Poni. “We are not beach crabs, but men, Aioma. What say you, Kanoa?”
Kanoa laughed and glanced at Le Moan and then away over the lagoon.
“I will work in the paraka patches and at the fishing,” said he, “but the work I would like best would be the work of measuring myself against those evil men you speak of, Aioma—that is the work for a man.”
As he spoke the reef trembled and the air shook to a long roll of thunder, an infinite, subdued, volume of sound heart-shaking because its source seemed not in the air above them, but in the earth beneath them and the sea that washed the reef.
The wind had died out at noon, the outer sea was calm and the lagoon, mirror-bright, was making three inch waves on the sand; the tide was at half flood.
Aioma looked about him, the others had risen to their feet and Poni, leaving them, had run on to a higher bit of ground and was looking over the outer sea.
Through the windless air came the outcrying of gulls disturbed and then in the silence following the great sound that had died away, came another silence. The voice of the rollers on the outer beach had almost ceased.
“The sea is going out,” cried Poni, “she is leaving us, she is dying—she has ceased to speak!”
As his voice reached them, they saw the water at the break swirling to an outgoing tide: an outgoing tide at half flood!
Led by Aioma they reached the higher ground, stood and gazed at the sea. The vast blue sea glittering without a touch of wind showed like a thing astray and disturbed. Its rhythm had ceased, swell met counter swell, and the Karaka rock spoke in foam; the wet coral showed the fall of the receding tide, and away to eastward white caps on the flawless blue marked the run of the north-flowing current checked for a moment in its course.