CHAPTER IV
“THE shell-gods moan in the valley, and your shadow dances!” said Hawahee to Sestrina a few days after his midnight visit to her.
What do you mean, Hawahee?” said Sestrina as she gazed long and earnestly at her solitary companion. A strange look, as though of fright, was in his eyes. His handsome face was pallid. Sestrina took his hand. He made no sign that she risked contagion by doing so, but stood quite still. Then he placed one arm gently over her shoulder and said, “Sestra, come and see, follow me.”
Sunrise was peeping over the ocean’s horizon, bathing the illimitable miles with liquid gold; like divine thrills of soundless sound from the bugles of eternity calling réveillé over the new day’s birth, transcendent hues, rich harmonics of colour, swept, thrilled with unheard music, the infinite horizons of the sailless seas. “How beautiful breathe the gods when Pelé’s eyes stare from the east,” whispered Sestrina as she stared from the hill-top, and like some goddess with an imaginary goblet in her outstretched hand, dipped it into the golden foams of the sunrise, and drank it with her lips and eyes!
“’Tis the great Atua’s hand painting the skyline of the new day with the colours of the old sunsets,” said Hawahee as he too turned and gazed on the ocean’s eastern skyline. Then they both turned away, and walking beneath the breadfruits, passed down the little slope that led into the deep leafy glooms of the valley.
As they approached the temple they heard the shell-organ moaning soft and low, Lydian strains and mournful monotones, some as faint as the murmurs of a sea-shell.
As they stood within a few feet of the pagan temple, Hawahee said: “Look, Sestra, art thou not beautiful as thy shadow dances?” As Hawahee spoke he pointed towards the shades of the mighty buttressed banyan that stood just to the left side of the temple.
“I can see nothing,” said Sestrina as she gazed in astonishment in the direction where Hawahee declared he saw the figure of a beautiful woman dancing—her own shadow—so he said.
Sestrina stared again. She could only see a moulting, dilapidated, large grey and red-winged parrot calmly preening its feathers as every now and again it gazed curiously at them from its high perch. Hawahee gave a startled look. He seemed to have suddenly come to his senses; for he looked round quickly and said, “’Tis only fancy, come away! come away!” He almost pulled Sestrina as he beckoned her to hasten from that spot. Slowly they both walked back, neither of them speaking one word to the other.
This incident greatly worried Sestrina. All day long she went about her domestic duties in an absent-minded way, reflecting deeply. “Perhaps his mind is ill. I remember reading in books, long years ago, that men and women become strange and have peculiar fancies—mad, I think they call the complaint. I will go and watch him. He may harm himself through his desire that afflicts him. Sooner than harm should come to him, I would—”