He spoke with the assurance of daring and power, but quietly, as though he were speaking of some ordinary matter.
They would sail for the south, “é Naya.” The wind from the north that had been dying and waking again all day was blowing strong again. It would last like that for days; it was the prevailing wind of the year and the moon was a fair-weather moon.
Then he went calmly to sleep, with Katafa’s arm across him, but she could not sleep.
She was already in her imagination on her way to her old home. The men of Karolin were all dead, their bones were whitening in the trees up there, there was nothing to fear. Only the women and children were left, and Uta Matu, the old king, worn out and approaching his end.
With her woman’s imagination, she saw Dick, the man she loved and gloried in, standing on the beach of Karolin, king and ruler.
Perhaps it was a prevision of this and the whitening bones of the men of Karolin that had made Le Juan years ago urge Uta Matu to destroy Katafa, and, failing, made her segregate the girl under the tabu of _taminan_. Who knows?
On the morning when Laminai and all his host set out, never to return, Uta Matu, sitting where his women had placed him on the sand of the beach, watched the canoes depart.
It was a glorious morning and the waters of the lagoon, stirring to the first of the ebb, were sweeping towards the break beyond which lay the outer sea like a vision of shattered sapphires.
He saw the paddles flashing, and the sheening foam of the outriggers; he watched the mat sails take the wind. Gulls followed the canoes, escorting them, wheeling, sweeping and clanging on the wind. Then the gulls passed away and the sails vanished beyond the reef, and Uta found himself alone.
Alone with the women and the children and the crabs of the beach, he who had always led the fight and directed the rowers and dispensed the laws of Karolin for sixty long years! Alone, and useless as the smallest child! Uta had been a hard and stern ruler, merciless to enemies, yet just according to his lights. He had known three gods—himself, Nanawa, the shark-toothed one, and Nan of the cocoanuts.
Just as a clever man believes in ghosts without letting the belief interfere in the least with his renting a house supposed to be haunted, Uta believed in his co-gods without letting his belief worry him much.
