In an hour or two they had gathered all the nudu flowers they desired, and then little Tarita looking up saw that the sky was overcast and blackening, and presently some heavy drops of rain fell.
Haste, haste, she cried to the others, let us away ere the strong wind which is behind the black clouds overtakes us on the lagoon.
Night comes on quickly in the South Seas, and by the time they had seated themselves in the canoe it was dark. In a little while a sharp rain-squall swept down from the northward, and they heard the wind rattling and crashing through the branches, of the palms on Tugulu.
Ninia, who was steering, boldly headed the canoe across the lagoon for Takai, and laughed when Ruvani and Tarita, who were wet and shivering with the cold rain, urged that they should put in at the beach on Tugulu and walk home.
Paddle, paddle strongly, she cried, what mattereth a little rain and wind! And sing, so that our mother will hear us and make ready something to eat. Look, I can already see the blaze of her fire.
Striking their paddles into the water in unison, they commenced to sing, but suddenly their voices died away in terror as a strange, droning hum was borne down to them from the black line of Tugulu shore; and then the droning deepened into a hoarse roaring noise as the wild storm of wind and fierce, stinging rain tore through the groves of cocoanuts and stripped them of leaves and branches.
Brave Ninia, leaning her lithe figure well over the side of the canoe, plunged her paddle deep down and tried to bring the canoe head to wind to meet the danger, and Ruvani, in the bow, with long hair flying straight out behind her, answered her effort with a cry of encouragement, and put forth all her strength to aid.
But almost ere the cry had left her lips, the full fury of the squall had struck them; the canoe was caught in its savage breath, twirled round and round, and then filled.
Keep thou in the canoe, little one, and bale, cried Ninia to Tarita, as she and Ruvani leaped into the water.
For some minutes the two girls clung with one hand each to the gunwale, and Tarita, holding the large wooden ahu or baler, in both hands, dashed the water out. Then she gave a trembling crythe baler struck against the side of the canoe and dropped overboard.
Ninia dared not leave the canoe to seek for it in the intense darkness, and so clinging to the little craft, which soon filled again, they drifted about. The waters of the lagoon were now white with the breaking seas, and the wind blew with fierce, cruel, steadiness, and although they knew it not, they were being swept quickly away from the land towards the passage in the reef.
The rain had ceased now, and the water being warm none of them felt cold, but the noise of the wind and sea was so great that they had to shout loudly to each other to make their voices heard.
Presently Ruvani called out to Ninia
Let us take Tarita between us and swim to the shore, ere the sharks come to us.
Nay, we are safer here, Ruvani, And how could we tell my mother that the canoe is lost? Let us wait a little and then the wind will die away.
Canoes are valuable property on Pingelap, where suitable wood for building them is scarce, and this was in Ninias mind.
They still kept hold of their paddles, and although afraid of the sharks, waited patiently for the storm to cease, little thinking that at that moment the ebbing tide and wind together had swept them into the passage, and that they were quickly drifting away from their island home.
All that night Ninia the widow and her four slaves sought along the beach of Tugulu for the three girls, who they felt sure had landed there. And when the day broke at last, and they saw that the gale had not ceased and that the canoe had vanished, they ran all the way over to the village, and Ninia threw herself at Sraliks feet.
Thy granddaughter and my children have perished, O chief.
The chief came to the door of his house and looked out upon the wild turmoil of waters.
It is the will of the gods, he said, else had not my whaleboat been crushed in the night, and he pointed to the ruins of the boat-shed upon which a huge cocoanut tree had fallen and smashed the boat.
Then he went back into his house and covered his face, for Ruvani was dear to his savage old heart.
And Ninia went back to her lonely house and wept and mourned for her lost ones as only mothers weep and mourn, be they of white skins or brown.
Away out into the ocean the canoe was swept along, and Ruvani and Ninia still clung to her, one at the head and one at the stern. Once there came a brief lull, and then they succeeded in partly freeing her from water, and Tarita using her two hands like a scoop meanwhile, the canoe at last became light enough for them to get in.
They were only just in time, for even then the wind freshened, and Ninia and Ruvani let the canoe run before it, for they were too exhausted to keep her head to the wind.
When daylight broke Ninia, with fear in her heart, stood up in the canoe and looked all round her.
There was no land in sight! Poor children! Even then they could not have been more than twenty miles away from the island, for Pingelap is very low and not visible even from a ships deck at more than twelve or fifteen miles.
But she was a brave girl, although only fourteen, and when Tarita and Ruvani wept she encouraged them.
Sralik will come to seek us in the boat, she said, although she could have wept with them.
The wind still carried them along to the westward, and Ninia knew that every hour was taking them further and further away from Pingelap, but, although it was not now blowing hard, she knew that it was useless for them to attempt to paddle against it. So, keeping dead before the wind and sea, they drifted slowly along.
At noon the wind died away, and then, tired and worn out, she and Ruvani lay down in the bottom of the canoe and slept, while little Tarita sat up on the cane framework of the outrigger and watched the horizon for Sraliks boat.
Hour after hour passed, and the two girls still slept. Tarita, too, had lain her weary head down and slumbered with them.
Slowly the sun sank beneath a sea of glassy smoothness, unrippled even by the faintest air, and then Ninia awoke, and, sitting up, tossed her cloud of dark hair away from her face, and looked around her upon the darkening ocean. Her lips were dry and parched, and she felt a terrible thirst.
Tarita, she called, art sleeping, dear one?
A sob answered her.
Nay, for my head is burning, and I want a drink.
The whole story of those days of unutterable agony cannot be told here. There, under a torrid sun, without a drop of water or a morsel of food, the poor creatures drifted about till death mercifully came to two of them.
It was on the evening of the second day that Ninia, taking her little sister in her own fast weakening arms, pressed her to her bosom, and, looking into her eyes, felt her thirst-racken body quiver and then grow still in the strange peacefulness of death. Then a long wailing cry broke upon the silence of the night.
How long she had sat thus with the childs head upon her bosom and her dead sightless eyes turned upward to the glory of the star-lit heavens she knew not; after that one moaning cry of sorrow that escaped from her anguished heart she had sat there like a figure of stone, dull, dazed, and unconscious almost of the agonies of thirst. And then Ruvani, with wild, dreadful eyes and bleeding, sun-baked lips, crept towards her, and, laying her face on Ninias hand, muttered
Farewell, O friend of my heart; I die.