The Navigator [antikvár]

ON THE WHITE BEACH OF HiVA OA, WHICH looked toward 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 ^ould jumble their syllables, so that none but the sacred men would ever comprehend them.