“Katafa,” said Dick that night as they sat after supper, idle, watching the dusk rise over the lagoon, “men came to-day in a boat like yours.”

Katafa heaved a great sigh; then she sat as if the breath were stricken out of her, without a word, her eyes fixed on the other.

He had said nothing of the affair till now, a fact that spoke volumes as to their mental relationship. Between Dick and Kearney there had been little of what we call conversation, between Dick and Katafa none. The inanimate things around them had the time of their lives; they did the talking or supplied the talk. Abstractions had no place in this strange community of two where the actual moment was everything, at least to Dick.

“Men?” said the girl, breaking the silence at last. “Where are they?”

“Gone,” said Dick. “I struck one and they went away, all but the one.”

Some instinct checked him, helped by dislike of the labour of talking. Dick could think up things from the past easily enough if they were recent, but to arrange them in the order of thought, dressed in and connected by words, was becoming a hateful labour.

It was extraordinary. The things he saw or touched gave him no trouble, but the things he had seen or touched, even though it were only an hour ago, were bothersome when they had to be turned into talk.

He lay back and yawned. Then, rising up, he went down to the lagoon bank, and the girl, watching in the dusk, saw him getting into the dinghy. He was bailing water out of her. That done, he busied himself for a few minutes overhauling the lines and putting them back in the locker. Then he walked off to the house and turned in, without a word, just as a cave man might have done in the days before speech was invented.

The girl, left to herself, turned on her side and then on her face, lying with her forehead on her crossed arms, brooding, suffering, dumb.

Karolin had drawn close to her and drawn away again, perhaps for ever, but Karolin was only a thought. Something deeper than thought had her in its grip, something that had risen in her mind to destroy Dick just as Nanawa had risen from the sea to destroy Kearney.

Once a law becomes part of the human mind, it becomes a living thing capable of good and evil, and the law of taminan implanted in the mind of Katafa, though simple as the law of gravity, became capable of profound effects—became, in fact, a beast of prey.

Thou shalt not touch another nor be touched. What law could be simpler than that or more seemingly innocent? Yet of Katafa it had made a creature beyond human sympathy and appeal. It lay in her soul as the barrel-shaped decapod lay in the sea, watchful, ever waiting to strike, ever fearful of being itself destroyed.

To clearly understand the power of taminan, one must recognise that its hold was not upon conscious thought but on the subconscious basis of thought beyond the power of will and reason, and yet capable of rousing will and reason into action, capable of inspiring the mind with aversion and hatred.

It had roused her thinking mind against Kearney, who had threatened it, and now as she lay with her face on her crossed arms, it was rousing her against Dick, calling on her to destroy him. Why? Dick had never tried to touch her, never threatened her, yet the beast of Le Juan in her soul dreaded Dick even more than it had dreaded Kearney.

Up to this, just as in the case of Kearney at first, her conscious mind had set itself against Dick in all sorts of trivial ways, breaking fishing lines and blunting the spears, but now, as in the case of Kearney when he hit her in the back with the ball, it had something definite to cling to. Dick had sent the canoes back to Karolin.

It was full night now, and as she rose and came down to the lagoon bank, the wind from the sea came warm and strong, breezing up the water and bringing with it the sound of the reef and the scent of the outer beach.

It was low tide. She cast her eyes on the dinghy where it lay moored to the bank. Dick, inspired by the sapling he had cut for the support of Nan, had made a little mast for the boat. The sail of Katafa’s canoe, which had not been destroyed, was lying in the shack behind the house and he intended using it for the purpose of cruising about the lagoon. She looked at the mast and the trivial thought of destroying or hiding it crossed her mind only to be dismissed.

Then, turning from the bank, she drew near the house and, close to the doorway, sank down, sitting on her heels, her face towards the doorway, listening.

She could hear nothing for a moment but the gently stirring foliage as it moved to the wind. Then, as she listened, clasped in the sound of the softly moving leaves, she heard the breathing of Dick in his sleep.

The interior of the house was dark except for a few points of starlight piercing the roof, but, as she gazed, her eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, the little ships began to show on their shelves, guarding the dreams of the sleeper beneath.

Once, long ago, on the very first night she had passed on the island, the prompting had seized her to set fire to the house, but the ships had saved Kearney and the boy. Now, darkly rising from the recesses of her mind, the prompting came again and the ships were no longer potent against it. She had handled one of them and though its god had brought Kearney running to its rescue, the god had done nothing else—could not even protect Kearney when Nanawa had seized him on the reef—a futile sort of deity, surely.

She could see the little shelf in the starlight and the match-box upon it. She rose to her feet without a sound and was moving towards the shelf, when a voice struck her motionless.

It was the voice of Dick fighting his battle with Sru over again in his dreams.

“Katafa!” came the voice, “hai amonai Katafa—help! He is seizing me!” Then a mumble of unintelligible words dying off to silence and the sound of Dick tossing uneasily in his sleep.

She stood with the starlight showering on her and the wind stirring her hair. Something had come between her and the deathly prompting to destroy him. Perhaps it was the voice suddenly shattering the silence and her purpose, or the appeal for help, the first that had ever reached her from human being.

She stood with her head uptilted as a person stands who is trying to catch some far-away sound. Then she drifted away, crossing the sward and vanishing among the trees.

Lying in her shack, she knew that the shark-toothed god had been about to seize Taori with claws of fire—as indeed he had. Taori had called to her for help, and she had helped by not firing the thatch. She could not understand in the least why she had held her hand, or why the appeal for help had so shattered her purpose. She didn’t try. She only knew that something had balked her for the moment.