Katafa

“ The fight with the Spanish ship people and the people of the Paumotus. Katafa’s name was mentioned—the child whom he had saved from Laminai and who had been drowned and devoured by the sharks. And as they whispered and talked, the lagoon water whispering on the beach seemed telling also of the deeds of the departing one, and in the far rumble of the reef the voice of the outer sea seemed joining in.
If Uta had never loved a human being, he had loved the sea, as the gulls love it, and the fish. ”

“ His universe had consisted of Palm Tree and Karolin, the sea that held them, the sky above them: Katafa—nothing more.
Then Palm Tree had vanished and Karolin had been taken from him and nothing was left but the great vacant world of the sea, that and the grief for the loss of Katafa.
He was going to die. He was dying. His very strength was killing him.
You sometimes find that—find that the power of a powerful man can be turned in against itself by grief or by disaster or disease.
He was going to die, as Aioma said, and Le Moan knew it. ”

“ That was why he had sent a canoe that morning across to the southern beach to fetch Aioma, Palia and Tafata, three old men, too old for war, but expert canoe-builders, that was why when gazing at the tribe in full congregation, his eyes had brightened to the fact that nearly a hundred of the youths were ripening to war age, but under all, lighting and animating his mind, raising daring to eagle heights, lay his passion for Katafa, his other self more dear to him than self, threatened, ever so vaguely, yet still threatened. ”

“ She who touched nothing but the food she ate, the ground she trod on and the water she swam in, who had never grasped a living thing since the tragedy of the Spanish ship so long ago, had seemingly failed to find the hold upon life given to the least of the Kanaka girls amongst whom she had grown up—creatures almost animal, yet human in affection and tied together by the common bonds of joy and hope and fear. One of the strangest effects of the terrible law under which Katafa lived was her insensibility to fear. ”

“ For a moment neither of them spoke, their eyes following the spray clouds of the breakers and the flighting gulls wheeling above the flooding sea. Then as they turned one to the other, and as he seized her by the shoulders, to Katafa for the first time fully came the knowledge of the splendour of man crowned with power—man triumphant, mighty, kingly and dominant. For in the past few hours Taori had changed from the passionate boy to a man fit to be the ruler of men. ”

“ Take her and do what you will with her, put spells upon her or what you like, but if you injure one hair of her head I will have you choked with a wedge of raw puraka and I will cast your body to the sharks, Le Juan.”
“As you please,” said the old woman; “I will do what I can.”
She did.
She christened Chita, Katafa, or the “Frigate Bird,” a creature associated with wanderings and great distances, and then gradually and year by year she isolated Katafa from the tribe, absolutely and in all but speech. ”

“ He, too, had watched the schooner disappear, rejoicing in the fact that she was gone with Taori leaving him (Kanoa) to find his love. And now Le Moan was gone—and with Taori. But he said nothing.
He turned away and lay down with his face hidden in his arms and as Katafa stood watching him, her anger turned to pity.
She came and sat beside him.
“She will return, Kanoa; they will return: he whom I love and she whom you love. They are gone but a little way. It is because they have gone from our sight that we grieve for them. ”

“ On no grown person could the tabu of taminan be imposed. Only on the plastic mind of childhood could it obtain its grip strong as hypnotism and lasting till death.
At six years of age Le Juan’s work was accomplished and Katafa was immune, isolated for ever from her kind. The work had been helped by the fact that every creature on Karolin had avoided her, but on the day when Le Juan proclaimed her free, she was taken into the tribe, men, women and children no longer held apart, and she mixed with them, played with them, fished with them, talked with them, a ghost in everything but speech. ”

“ The sea is clear.”
“Aioma,” said Dick, “I have come from there,” pointing to the north; “the sea is not clear.”
“You have come from Marua (Palm Tree) ?”
“I have come from Marua, where one day Katafa came, drifted from here in her canoe; there we lived till a little while ago when men landed, killing and breaking and burning—burning even the big canoe they had come in. Then Katafa and I set sail for Karolin, for Karolin called me to rule her people.” ”

“ The common-sensical part of the business was the idea of using the deity as a signal. If any fishing canoe from Karolin were to sight that effigy erected on the reef, it would come in to explore, and, if Katafa knew anything of the Karolinites, it would not leave till the whole place had been searched for the persons who had dared to erect the image of the cocoanut god on an alien shore. ”

“ There in the house, with the little ships above him, Taori was sleeping, far from her as any star.
She could no more leave the protection of the trees than Nalia could have left the sea. The open space repelled her as it might have repelled an agoraphobiac, only with infinitely greater power. She was bound to the woods for ever.
In the old romances we read of women spell-bound by witches and black magic. Le Juan had used no black magic; working with no material but Katafa’s self, she had moulded into it a law that had become part of self. Passion could not fight with or break that law ”

“ He lay on the ground, and as he lay a woman, one of the wives of Poni, came running, panting as she ran.
“I burn, I burn!” cried the woman. “Aioma, my sight is going from me; I burn, I burn!” She fell on the ground and Katafa running to her raised her head.
Aioma turning on his side tried to rise but could not, then he laughed.
Then he began to sing. He was fighting the papalagi and killing them, the Spaniards of long ago and the whale men and Carlin and Rantan ”

“ There we lived and there I grew to be a boy and Kearney, that was his name, taught me to fish and spear fish, and he made for me things to play with, little ships unlike the canoes of the islands. And then, Tari, one day long ago came Katafa, the girl who was blown away from here in a storm. She lived with us till Kearney died and then we two were alone. She taught me her language, which is the language of Karolin. She named me Taori; we loved one another and might have lived forever at Marua had not a great ship come there filled with bad men, men from the eastern islands of Melanesia. ”

“ I will serve thee with my feet, and thou shalt serve me with thy eyes.”
He took the footless and carried him. Katoma sat, looked on both sides, and cried out: “To the right; to the left; straight ahead.” They lived in this way some time in the forest and caught food,—hares, foxes, and bears.
Once the footless asked: “Is it possible that we shall live all our lives without company? I have heard that in a certain town there is a rich merchant with his daughter, and the daughter is very charitable to poor people and cripples, and gives alms herself to all. ”

“ The Kataafa warriors would declare him king. The Panu natives in such great inferiority of numbers cannot resist except with the aid of the sailors, and that could not be given as long as you refuse to join. The treaty distinctly stipulates that action may be taken unanimously. There would be no war. The next mail from home would bring the recall of this partial judge. Kataafa would remain king, and then he must soon seek annexation to our Herzovinia. I hope to see our flag hoisted over the Kapuan Islands. ”

“ What is it you want? Have you brought anything for me to eat?" The youth gave her the game he had killed, and she began devouring it. After swallowing all the carcases she said, "Well, what do you want?" He answered, "I want some kataki flowers for my sister." She told him it would be very difficult for him to get them, as they were guarded by seven hundred rßkshasas, but if he was determined to attempt it, he had better first go to his uncle on the north side of the Jungle. ”

“ As for Katipah, she was so happy now that the sorrow of waiting for her husband’s return grew small. Day by day the west wind blew softly, and she knew that Gamma-gata was there, keeping watch over her and her child.
Every day she would say to the little one, “Come, my plum-petal, my wind-flower, I will send thee up to thy father that he may see how fat thou art getting, and be proud of thee!” And going down to the shore, she would lay the child among the strings of her kite and send it up to where Gamma-gata blew a wide breath over sea and land. ”

“ Gently the West Wind took it and blew it away towards the sea. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she whispered softly, “hear me now, for I am not afraid.”
The wind blew hard upon the kite, and pulled as though to catch it away, so Katipah twisted the cord once or twice round her waist that she might keep the safer hold over it. Then she said to the chief magistrate and to all the people that were assembled: “I am innocent of all that is charged against me; for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha herself who killed her own child.” ”

“ I will sacrifice the wine; there are jars of wine there that were old in my father's time—but it must be so! You are right! Many things have occurred which the king will not forgive! You are right, you are right—do what seems good to you. I will retire after the feast to the Ethiopian camp."
"They will hail you as king as soon as the usurpers have fallen in the flames," cried Katuti. "If only a few set the example, the others will take up the cry, and even though you have offended Ameni he will attach himself to you rather than to Rameses. ”

“ At this soft answer Bimsha went back into her house in a fury, and Katipah laughed to herself. Then she sighed, and said, “Oh, Gamma-gata, return to me quickly, lest my word shall seem false to Bimsha, who hates me!”
Every day after this Bimsha thrust her face over the fence to say: “Katipah, where is this fine husband of yours? He does not seem to come home often.”
Katipah answered slily; “He comes home late, when it is dark, and he goes away very early, almost before it is light. It is not necessary for his happiness that he should see you.” ”

“ Katipah was laughing when she picked up her kite and ran home. And Bimsha thought, “Is it witchcraft, or did the child fall into the sea?”
In the night the West Wind came and tapped at Katipah’s window; and rising from her bed, she heard Gamma-gata’s voice calling tenderly to her. When she opened the window to the blindness of the black night, he kissed her, and putting the little one in her arms, said, “Wait only a little while longer, Katipah, and I will come again to you. Already you are learning to be brave.” ”

“ It was not until after the establishment of Musalmán power in Gujarát that any portion of the peninsula came to bear the name of the tribe of Káthis. Even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, the name Káthiáváḍa was applied only to one of the sub-divisions of the peninsula. In the disorders which prevailed during the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Káthis made themselves conspicuous. As it was from the hardy horsemen of this tribe that the tribute-exacting Maráthás met with the fiercest resistance, they came to speak of the whole peninsula as the land of the Káthis. ”

“ So Katipah gathered up her field-sorrel, and went away home and ate her solitary midday meal with a mixture of pride and sorrow in her timid little breast. “Some day, when I am grown brave,” she thought, “Gamma-gata will come back to me; but he will not come yet.”
In the evening Bimsha looked over the fence and jeered at her. “Do not think, Katipah,” she cried, “that you will ever get a husband, for all your soft looks! You are too poor and unprofitable.” ”

“ What the noble organ of sight, the eye, overlooked, the callous despised sole of the foot found; and perhaps the small slave, Nemu, who knows nothing of honor, may succeed in finding a mode of escape which is not revealed to the lofty soul of his mistress!"
"What are you thinking of?" asked Katuti.
"Escape," answered the dwarf. "Is it true that thy sister Setchem has visited thee, and that you are reconciled?"
"She offered me her hand, and I took it?"
"Then go to her. Men are never more helpful than after a reconciliation. ”

“ Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly through the air, out of reach of the hands stretched up to catch her, and addressed the populace in these words:
“Oh, cruel people, who will not believe innocence when it speaks, you must believe me now! I am the wife of the West Wind—of Gamma-gata, the beautiful, the bearer of fine weather, who also brings back the wings that fly till the winter is over. Is it well, do you think, to be at war with the West Wind? ”

“ Those who dislike long names may use its shorter Indian title, Umdo. We climbed a granite crag draped with moss long as the beard of a Druid,—a crag on the south side of Ambajeejus or Umdo. Thence we saw Katahdin, noble as ever, unclouded in the sunny morning, near, and yet enchantingly vague, with the blue sky which surrounded it. It was still an isolate pyramid rising with no effect from the fair blue lakes and the fair green sea of the birch-forest,—a brilliant sea of woods, gay as the shallows of ocean shot through with sunbeams and sunlight reflected upward from golden sands. ”

“ Katuti gazed into vacancy, and the steward started back as from a mad woman when, instead of bursting into tears, she clenched her small jewelled hands, shook her fists in the air, and broke into loud, wild laughter; then, startled at the sound of her own voice, she suddenly became silent and fixed her eyes vacantly on the ground. She neither saw nor heard that the captain of the watch, who was called "the eyes and ears of the king," had come in through the door of her tent followed by several officers and a scribe; he came up to her, and called her by her name. ”