TWO days after Sestrina had surprised Hawahee before her image, he came to her and said: “Wahine, thou and I have tarried too long on this cursed isle, dwelling in the anguish of our secret desires.”
“Yes, Hawahee,” murmured the lonely woman as she hid her face and stirred the bubbling, sweet-scented poi-poi (taro and yam stew).
“I have thought deeply and long, Sestra mine, and feel ’twill be well to build a raft so that we may float away together over the seas, you and I alone, sweet goddess of my soul; shall it be?”
Sestrina heard the note of resolve in the man’s voice. Her heart was thrilled with a great hope. She did not realise the dangers of being cast away on those infinite waters on a raft, at the mercy of the elements and the hot merciless light of the tropic suns. Often during the first lonely years of their castaway life, Sestrina had suggested to Hawahee that they could build a boat and try and float away to the shores of the great world again. Hawahee had even, for the girl’s sake, agreed to make the attempt, but Sestrina had dissuaded him when she remembered that he would only be captured and sent to Molaki if they did arrive safely on the shores of the civilised world again.
“Hawahee, I long to leave this isle. None need ever know that you once had the dreadful kilia,” she murmured, as she turned her head and gazed tenderly into the face of the sad-looking man who stood awaiting her reply.
The first confusion that had come to her through Hawahee’s presence had disappeared. A great future with a maze of possibilities had flashed into her hopeful brain. For a moment she stood stirring the poi-poi, speechless with joy.
“And the shell-gods—would you leave them—’twould be—” She stopped.
A shadow had passed across Hawahee’s face. In a moment she felt that she had foolishly reverted to a subject that might be the cause of dashing her hopes to atoms. She too, revered the shell-gods, but what were their solemn moanings when compared to the beautiful world of the past, and the memories of her girlhood?
With a sweep of her hand, so to speak, she had swept the mighty heathen gods to perdition. “Curse the shells, curse the gods, I hate the moaning shells,” was her mental ejaculation.
But Sestrina’s fears were groundless, Hawahee had no intention of swerving from his resolve to build a raft and leave the isle.