The Navigator [antikvár]

I On the white beach of Hiva Oa, which looked towards the moonrise and the breakers on the outer reef, Kaloni Kienga, the navigator, squatted under a pahn-tree and drew pictures in the sand. He was an old man and sacred - more sacred even than the chief -because he knew all the secrets of the sea; how the wind whispered before a big blow, how the currents bent when they passed this atoll or that, how the te lapa, the underwater lightning, shone, ten fathoms down, even when the sky was black and starless at midnight. The pictures which Kaloni drew in the sand were mystic signs like those tattooed on his arms and his breast. Their names were spoken only in the ritual language of the ancestors. The rising tide would wash them away. The wind would jumble their syllables, so that none but the sacred men would ever comprehend them. For Kaloni Kienga the drawing of the pictures was no mere idleness. It was an act of making, a creation of that which had been destined, dreamed, called to happen long, long before the seed of himself had been planted in his mother's belly. The events which he traced in symbol must be, would be; and he could no more change them than he could hft his finger from the sand imtil the whole design was complete. The moon which rose this night would be a dying moon. One day, when it rose new and young, the ship would come with it, ghosting through the chaimel, sails spread like a sea-bird's wings, running before the night wind. He would hear the clout of her canvas as she came up into the breeze, the rattle of her hawser as she dropped anchor in the lagoon. He would see her, stripped black and bare against the sickle moon, as she lay back on her anchor, her lights yellow on the slack water. He would hear the voices of her crew and the silence afterwards as they settled to rest from the long swing of the ocean. Then, out of the silence, out of the water, sleek as a silver fish, a man would come to him: