Night Is Before the Davm 5 



ing along their taut sides. There are two score of them strung out 

 across the channel between the islands, moving slowly towards the 

 open ocean. Now they form a great concave arc lying idle upon the 

 waters, rising and falling on the immense smooth-surfaced swell that 

 rolls into the channel, so that first they all vanish together as if they 

 had never been, and then all rise again, black against the blueness of 

 the sky. They wait silently. 



There comes a lull in the endless passing of the birds. The gulls 

 mew over the shore behind the wind, and the air is momentarily 

 silent and aware. Then suddenly it is not silent. A loud pufiing 

 snort is heard; it is answered by others and there are unseen splashes 

 upon the waters. Dark forms rise in some of the canoes, while others 

 on the flanks of the formation begin silent, purposeful maneuvers. 

 A goose honks loudly in the air above. There is another and nearer 

 splash accompanied by a loud exhalation of air somewhere in the 

 oily waters. Four of the canoes dart forward, icy blue ripples shim- 

 mering from their prows in the half-light. They converge swiftly 

 upon a point, while the others close up the line of the arc behind. 

 Three prolonged blowings suddenly break upon the tense silence; 

 they are so close at hand that they seem to fill the crystal air with a 

 sort of whistling vibration. A naked man rises in one of the advance 

 canoes; his hairy arm goes back holding a thin streak poised against 

 the depthless blue of the sky. A moment he waits, and then his arm 

 descends and the streak is gone. There follows a moment of silence 

 and then a spume of white foam shoots up from the black sea. Im- 

 mediately more figures bob up in the other canoes and more thin 

 lances are poised momentarily against the sky. Then they too shoot 

 down and the water between the canoes boils into a fury of mad- 

 dened churning and spray flies like bursting thistle seed. Smackings 

 and hangings break out upon the waters where something breathing 

 with gargantuan sighs, and gurgling horribly, now thrashes about. 

 A canoe upends abruptly, standing for an instant like an obelisk 

 above the water, and then suddenly and silently vanishes. The men 

 never utter a sound but they bob up and down on the little mael- 

 strom, their wet torsos now shining in the blue light of a brighten- 

 ing dawn. 



The line breaks ranks and the canoes glide together, forming little 

 knots upon the waters. Like turmoils break out at a dozen other 



