Her arm was up to throw when he leaped at her and caught her arm and wrenched the pearl from her. He struck her in the face with his clenched fist and she fell among the boulders, and he kicked her in the side.
Now, in an instant, Juana knew that the old life was gone forever. A dead man in the path and Kino’s knife, dark bladed beside him, convinced her.
And when the light broke through again he saw that a great hole had been knocked in the bottom. And a searing rage came to him and gave him strength. . . . The canoe of his grandfather, plastered over and over, and a splintered hole broken in it. This was an evil beyond thinking. The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal.
He saw a little glow ahead of him, and then without interval a tall flame leaped up in the dark with a crackling roar, and a tall edifice of fire lighted the pathway. Kino broke into a run; it was his brush house, he knew.
“This pearl has become my soul,” said Kino. “If I give it up I shall lose my soul.”