Suddenly the maid, who had been dancing with her hands raised, stayed the silent trippings of her feet and fell on one knee before me. In my finest Hans Andersen style, I took her hand and listened to her pleading. My heart beat rapidly, I know, as she said in accents soft and low:
“O pale-faced troubadour from the western seas, come! Follow me!”
“Fancy this being the end of my wanderings in the southern seas!” I muttered deep within my soul, as she knelt there on the promontory’s edge and gazed into my eyes in a final mute appeal. Then I rose to my feet. I well knew that many men had risked their all for the sake of the light of witchery in a woman’s eyes. Perhaps she observed my hesitation, for, as she gazed on me, I saw her eyes blink, and, lo! I got one splendid glimpse of the stars that shone in their liquid depths. Nor could I help myself, as, standing there, I touched her lips with my own thrice before I took the final plunge. I instinctively placed my violin under my coat so that it would not get wet. Once more I looked up at the sky. Then we both dived noiselessly into the ocean and faded away into the depths of a great silence.
I opened my eyes. Pokara was still beside me, fast asleep. Only the passionate song of the _O Le Mao_, high up in the breadfruits just overhead, disturbed the silence of the forest as I stared up at the stars. Then in some vague longing I turned over and tried to sleep, so that I might catch up the thread of that dream again.
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Pokara tells me how the first Idol came to be Worshipped.
WHEN I opened my eyes, the morning parrots were wheeling away in screaming droves over the slopes. Pokara was already awake and busy cooking yams for our breakfast on a little fire in the open.
Pokara, who loved to be addressed thus, saluted me in his fascinating theatrical style.
“Did we travel together under the _moani ali_ (sea) last night, and watch a beautiful goddess walk the midnight skies with stars shining in her hair, comrade?” said I, as a bird flew out of the sunrise, pouring forth passionate melody in its rapture of the awakening day over our wide bedroom floor and the sculptural beauty of our vast, columned portico—the mountain gaps high over the forest slopes. For answer Pokara said: