As the days passed Hawahee would sit by Sestrina with a troubled expression on his face. “Like me, he sorrows over the memories of the past,” thought Sestrina as she sat opposite him, watching him moodily toil over the beautiful basket-weaving which he was so proficient in. Then the castaway girl’s handsome comrade would rise, and saying, “Wahine, I will go and scan the seas for a sail,” would walk across the valley to see his leper comrades.
And why did Hawahee seek his stricken brothers? It was for the special purpose of remonstrating with them, chiding them for their evil desires.
“Thou hast deserted thy goddess Pelé, and Atua of Langi,” he would say as he stood before the stricken men while they sat huddled by their wattle hut by the moaning, everlasting seas.
Lupo, Rohana, Steno and the two blind men would hang their heads in shame and ask forgiveness.
“Ora loa Jesu,” sighed Rohana as he knelt in prayer before Hawahee, asking the Christian God to help him fight against his sinful desires.
“’Tis well that you pray,” said Hawahee sternly, as he reminded them how they had broken their sacred oaths. For they, too, had embraced Christianity when first afflicted with the scourge, and at the same time had secretly sworn to be faithful to the goddess Pelé and the god Kuahilo, and so banish all desires of the flesh.
“’Tis te rom (rum) that did fire our bodies and the meats from the wreck,” murmured Lupo.
Then Steno had sighed in a melancholy voice in this wise:
“But beautiful is she who dwelleth near our sorrow, she hath eyes and beauty that must have been made by the great White God when He first sighed the stars and made the soft whiteness of the sea-dawns.”
“Surely her mouth was made from the rosy flush of the first sunrise that startled the great dark on the deep seas,” murmured Rohana as Steno’s words fired his soul with bright thoughts over Sestrina’s beauty.