“Look!” cried Kanoa.
The formation had altered; sweeping round from the east in a grand curve, the great moonlit line was shortening moment by moment till now it had contracted, showing only the van of the oncomers, who were heading for Karolin through the night sky like a spear towards a target.
The sound of them could now be heard, a steady winnowing sound, the pulse-like beat of ten thousand wings, whilst all along the reef from windward and leeward came the crying of the gulls of Karolin.
The crying of the burgomasters and skuas, the frigate birds and the great southern gannets, the laughing gulls and the Brandt’s cormorants, all rising like a challenge to the newcomers from whom came no response other than the steady throbbing of the wings.
The gulls of Karolin knew, knew that of which the human beings were ignorant—knew that away beyond the sea line some great home of the sea fowl had vanished beneath the waves as Kingaman island and Lindsay island have vanished in the past, as many a Pacific island will vanish in the years to come. Knew that this was an army of invasion, a fight for a home and fishing rights. Knew that the waters of Karolin and the breeding places were insufficient for themselves and the strangers, knew that the moment which all nations and all wild herds and flocks must face, had come, and then as though actuated by one single mind, rose in a vast ringshaped cloud and swept away south.
Swept away south beneath the moon whilst the van of the invaders now nearly above the reef swerved and turning due west, was followed by the whole line in what seemed, at first, level flight. Then rising and curving in a grand curve like that of a spiral nebula it broke into voice, a challenge that was answered from the south.
“Look!” cried Aioma.
The Karolin birds were returning, drifting like a curl of smoke. A wind seemed blowing them lazily through the sky, a wind seemed moulding them and the invaders, till, in the form of two great vortex rings, they overhung the lagoon: a moment and then clashing in battle, they broke, reformed, and broke again, snowing dead and wounded gulls beneath the moon. The storm of their cries filled the night from reef to reef— now they would be dark against the moon, now away like blown smoke.
Sometimes the battle would drift towards the southern beach only to return gliding towards the northern. It was truly the battle that drifted, not the birds.
Just as a flock flies like one bird, moving here, heading there, under the dominion of a common mind, so these two great flocks fought—each not as a congregation, but as an individual; till, of a sudden and as if at the sounding of a trumpet, the combat broke, the storm ceased, the clouds parted, one still circling above the reef, the other drifting away southeast beneath the moon.