There was something of the schoolgirl in this old gentleman’s moments of excitement and expansion, something distinctly feminine in his times of uplift. No longer fearing capsize, free now of the obsession of the outrigger and glorying in the extraordinary and new sensations crowding on him, he remembered the gulls, the reef of Marua and his scheme.
“Taori,” cried Aioma, “the canoes I have built, nay the biggest of them, are to this as the chickens of the great gull to their mother. Let the wind follow us till the going down of the sun and we will see Marua.”
Dick, for the first time, looked back and saw the far treetops of Karolin. They seemed a vast distance away.
He thought for the first time of Katafa. She had said no word asking him to limit the cruise. Aioma had only suggested taking the ship beyond the reef and the provision of water and fruit had only been taken as a precaution against the dangers of the sea. She had dreaded the business but had spoken no word, fearing to spoil his pleasure, and sure that he would risk nothing for the love of her. But she had reckoned without his youth and the daring which God had implanted in the heart of man; she had reckoned without the extraordinary fascination the schooner exercised upon him and of which she knew next to nothing. She had reckoned without Aioma.
A thread tying his heart to the distant shore twitched as though at the pull of Katafa.
“But Marua is far,” said he.
Aioma laughed. “The canoes have often gone there,” he replied, “and what are they to this? Besides, Taori, it is no idle journey I wish to make, for it is in my mind that it was from the reef of Marua those gulls came that fought the gulls of Karolin, they were seeking a new home. Why?”
“The gulls only know,” replied Dick, “and then there are the bad men whom some day I mean to slay, but not now, for we have not enough men, not a spear with us.”
“We have the speak sticks of the papalagi,” said Aioma, “and I can use them. Le Moan taught me, but the bad men are out of sight; in this business we need not draw nearer to Marua than we are now from Karolin, or only a little. It is the reef I wish to see and what may walk on it, for gulls do not leave their home just because the wind blows hard or the sea rises high. They have been driven, Taori, and what has driven them—greater gulls, or some new form of man—who knows? But I wish to see.”
Dick pondered on this. He had only intended to sail the schooner a short way, to feel her moving on the outer sea, to handle her; with the eating had come the appetite, with the handling of power the desire to use it. He had no fear about getting back, Karolin lagoon light would lead them just as it had led him and Katafa, and his mind was stirred by what Aioma had said about the gulls.