After that I withdrew as hastily as possible from her chamber. Palao and Sango re-entered and prostrated themselves at her feet. This pleased her immensely. Going down the mossy pathway that led to the stockade gate, I turned my head and waved two or three farewell salutations. The last I saw of her was as she stood by her door, her forked teeth close together as she grinned with pleasure at thinking I should return on the morrow! But I did not return again. And I may say here, that I have always felt more at ease in the presence of old native men than in the presence of native women, be they waiting-women or ex-queens.
Before I left the immediate precincts of that bungalow, which Vakamoa styled her “palace,” I strolled into the tiny coral-fenced clearing by the plateau of the mountain slopes. It was the lonely place where the tribe buried their dead. I gazed for a little time on the strange tomb-stones, and tried to make out the inscriptions that apparently commemorated the past virtues of kings and chiefs who had passed into shadowland. Notwithstanding the feathery palms and the glimpse of the far-away, moonlit, tumbling seas, it was a forlorn place. And now, doubtlessly, that discarded Queen Vakamoa has long since dissolved, with all her pride of past queenship, into a little dust, and a lump of memorial coral tells where she lies in that tiny, barbarian necropolis.
Next day I accepted the invitation of Palao to stop in his father’s bungalow near the shore. I had had enough adventure for the time being, and so was extremely pleased to romp with the native children and listen to their wonderful fairy-tales. For be it noted that those children had their Hans Andersens and Grimms, just as we have. I’ll tell one of the stories in the next chapter.
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CHAPTER XIV. TISSEMAO AND THE CUTTLE-FISH
Impressionistic Scene in Nuka Hiva—Tissemao listens to the Luring Voice of a Cuttle-fish—The Love-Stricken Cuttle-fish—When Crabs are Brave.
THE pagan city of Nuka Hiva was silent. The tired sentinel stars were creeping homeward. Dawn had already arisen from her silvery couch, her soft robe, cut out of the warm western winds, wrapped around her, her sandals dipped in light as she stood on the skyline, a few stars still plucking her dusky hair. Then that wonderful enchantress, who awakens the ages, stepped tiptoe across the horizon’s shadow hills, the echoes of her footfalls winging the silence of the tropic seas. Those echoes, colliding with the granite hills of South Sea fairy-land, rustled the magical shadows of the sylvan hollows, then, touching the winged nymphs and petals of the flamboyants and ndrala blossoms, sped onward into the deeper glooms of the forests. An aged cockatoo who had spent its best years as a vassal of the god _Atua Mao_, looked sidelong at the golden gleams of the eastern sky and called out hoarsely: