Then he lay prone and beat his hands on the ground. Again he rose to his feet, and, rushing down the valley, knelt before the wonderful stone figures that were the great hope and pagan joy of his spiritual-dreaming life. He lifted his arms in fervent prayer to Atua, and gazed in an awestruck way up at Kauhilo’s eternal sidelong glance, and then again into great Pelé’s face and the eyes that gave their immutable stare into the leafy shadows. Rising from his knees, he again paid obeisance to the gods of his own creating, and then rushed out into the shadows close by and prayed again!
The great grey dawn came stealing over the Pacific: Hawahee was still awake. He had only slept an hour or so. The wonder of his discovery had driven sleep from his mind. Again he leapt from his couch. Again he stood outside by his hut, in the soft light of the breaking day, and let the sunrise gleams fall like liquid flame on his muscular form.
“Atua, O Pelé, O Kauhilo! I thank thee!” he cried aloud as he stared in delight on the perfect smoothness of his muscular flanks, his bosom and the healthful glow of his body! Hastily pulling on his tappa-robe, he ran down the slope, away once more to pray to his gods!
Such was Hawahee’s delight when he left Sestrina and found he was full of health.
In the meantime, Sestrina wept. Directly she saw Hawahee disappear in his hut she hastened away over the slopes and filled in the grave which he had dug for himself! Then she had returned in sorrow to her lonely habitation. That same night, as Hawahee prayed in the frenzy of delight over his discovery, Sestrina knelt alone in her chamber, praying to the great White God of her childhood. Then, remembering, she bowed her head and prayed to the gods of the temple.
“O Hawahee, thou art now all the world, all of life and light to me, therefore I cannot desert the gods thou prayest to,” she murmured, as she thought of the grave he had dug.
She was still awake when dawn sent a glimmer of silvery light over her couch and along the wooden walls, touching the faded faces of the past. She lay still, her eyes staring into the great sorrow of her dreams as the first gleam of sunrise touched her couch, and her ears heard the chatterings and melodious whistlings of the cockatoos and parrots. The music of the birds called her back to herself. She at once rose and swiftly attired herself in the picturesque costume which Hawahee, with such artistic toil and love, had weaved. Stealing from her chamber, she ran outside her doorway and stood like a graceful nymph in the cool morning air. Her face was strangely flushed, her eyes feverish-looking, as she gazed into the shadowy depths of the orange trees and smelt the damp of the gloom that were illuminated with flowers. Glancing around, she spied the calabash wherein Hawahee kept the fermented orange and lime juice which he so carefully made for himself. For often he, too, could not sleep.
“It brings sweetest sleep to my brain, O Sestra,” he had said.
And so the pagan girl dipped the coco-nut-shell goblet into the calabash, and filling it to the brim, drank twice! Thoughts of Hawahee and their mutual sorrow commenced to haunt her mind. “O Atua, O great Pelé, why am I denied this man’s caress—and yet—” and as she spoke she hesitated and dropped her eyes as some old memory seemed to steal on the soft dawn’s breeze, coming to her as though from far beyond the seas. She placed her fingers into her ears as though to stay the hidden voices—for she had heard strange whisperings that night as Hawahee gazed in joy on the full grace of his graceful form and dreamed of the solitary woman who slept near him.
“Why not gaze into his eyes as I have longed to gaze in other eyes? Why not feel the lovely, strong clasp of the arms of love? Have I not secretly longed for such love—and have I not heard the hidden voices of his dreams steal to me across the moonlit yam patch? Why have the gods given me this strange desire? Am I different to the women who walk the great living world that I am separated from by those far-away skylines of the ocean and by cruel fate. O Atua, O Pelé, do I not remember the old things of my childhood, of the longings and sweet, kind ways of the world of the past? Was I not a child once, and did not my head lay on the bosom of a mother who was beautiful in the virgin light of pure motherhood?”