But this one was not acting like the normal waves at the mouth of the reef. It seemed as though it was standing still.

He stared at it and realized what he was seeing. It looked as if it was standing still because it was a big wave a long way off, and it was moving very fast, dragging black night behind it.

Very fast, and not so far away now. Not a wave, either. It was too big. It was a mountain of water, with lightning dancing along the top, and it was rushing, and it was roaring, and it scooped up the canoe like a fly.

Soaring up into the towering, foaming curve of the wave, Mau thrust the paddle under the vines that held the outrigger and grabbed on as —

It rained. It was a heavy, muddy rain, full of ash and sadness. Mau awoke from dreams of roast pork and cheering men, and opened his eyes under a gray sky.

Then he was sick.

The canoe rocked gently in the swell while he added, in a small way, to what was already floating there — bits of wood, leaves, fish….

Cooked fish?

Mau paddled over to a large hehe fish, which he managed to drag aboard. It had been boiled, right enough, and it was a feast.

He needed a feast. He ached everywhere. One side of his head was sticky with, as it turned out, blood. At some point he must have hit it on the side of the canoe, which wasn’t surprising. The ride through the wave was an ear-banging, chest-burning memory, the kind of dream you are happy to wake up from. All he’d been able to do was hold on.

There had been a tunnel in the water, like a moving cave of air in the roll of the giant wave, and then there had been a storm of surf as the canoe came out of the water like a dolphin.