“O Atua, O Pelé, goddess of beauty and innocence, why is my heart afflicted? Why are the visionary shadows of my unhappy soul when shaped into cold stone, sweeter than the realities I touch with living desire, sweeter than the wines of love, sweeter than the touch of passionate lips?”
And there, with his head inclined, the tall, handsome, noble-looking fanatic, listened, awaiting a reply! But only the solemn moan of the gods came to his ears as he gazed once more at the image of his soul’s desire, and then stole away into the shadows.
Sestrina laughed like a happy child to herself as she lay in bed that night and thought of all that Hawahee had said. She could hear the white-ridged combers charging the shore reefs below, and they seemed to be calling, “Come on! Come! out to our wide waters that sweep away through the skylines to the great shores where the lights of the cities gleam.”
“I’ll see the great world again! I’ll gaze into the lovely eyes of memory—the long, long memory! O Atua, O Pelé!” she cried; and then she remembered—she felt a great shame sweep through her, and immediately called out, “O great White God, God of my childhood, God of the white men, and his God!—he of long years ago.” Then she sighed and shed tears. “Have they forgotten me? Has he forgotten? No, ’tis I who forgot! I who have been faithful in the soul through all the long years. O God of my childhood, you! you know that I have been faithful in my soul to the past!”
Ah, sad, beautiful Sestrina.
Day by day Hawahee toiled over the raft. He had gathered many boards together and had fixed them side by side with the Belle Isle’s old hatchway. With native dexterity he had lashed each plank to the deck and had framed a little bulwark. Then he made small lockers.
“What are they for?” said Sestrina, who kept running to and fro like a happy child, giving all the help she could to Hawahee as he toiled over the craft that was to take them on that great voyage out into the trackless seas.
“It is for food and water, for we must take much water and food with us, Sestra,” said Hawahee as he dropped his rough tools and gazed across the infinite expanse of tropic ocean. No wonder he sighed as he gazed on the dim wastes and the encircling skylines, the only dim, blue hope of that wide world of water.