The duplicate, the glittering brother of the first long line of light, was moving as swiftly towards them across the sea. Again the Karaka spouted and the gulls clanged out, again the great green hill of water sucked the shore sea to it, curved, crested and broke to the roar of miles and miles of reef.
The bones of the houses broken by the first great comber could be heard washing amidst the tree roots below and from the canoe-builders’ grove came the crash of a great tree, a matamata, less secure a refuge than the slender-stemmed coconuts. It had fallen lagoonward and the people on it, unkilled, were climbing along it back to shore when yet again came the cry:
“Amiana—amiana! The wave—the wave!”
It was the third great wave, bright like a far glittering bar of crystal, scintillating with speed, sweeping through distance as the others had swept towards the reef and lagoon of Karolin.
But now, after the first outcry, the people in the treetops no longer awaited the coming of the danger in silence.
Their spirit suddenly broke. The sight of this third dazzling apparition was too much. What had they done to the sea that she should do this thing to them? Their houses were gone, the trees were beginning to go; the trees would be destroyed and the reef itself would follow them, for what could withstand the enmity of the sea or the night that sent these vast glittering waves unleashed across her, one following on another—with how many more yet to come!
So as the third great wave drew back in silence for its blow against the land, the voice of Karolin was heard, a lamentable voice against the crying of the gulls; children and women and youths and some of the newcome kanakas joined in the cry, but not Le Moan or Katafa, nor Dick. Not Aioma, who, sure of his beloved schooner, found now time and words to comfort his weaker brethren when the comber crashing in spindrift and thunder left the trees still unbroken and a silence through which his voice could be heard.
He called them names that cannot be repeated, but which heartened them up, then he told them that the worst was over and to look at the sea.
Yes, the worst was over. No fourth brilliant line of light showed like the sword blade of Destruction sweeping over the blue, only a greater heave of the swell lifting the inshore green into breakers, horses of the sea resuming their eternal charge against the long line of the reef.