Kasawayo, remembering how she had promised to be faithful to the god, trembled as her lover once more struck the coral-pillars, till one of them fell crash at her feet.
It was then that a great, roaring sound, and what sounded like the angry lashing of a mighty tail, came out from the cavern’s gloom. Then the serpent’s huge head appeared at the cavern’s door. In a moment Kora bravely sprang forward, and the battle began.
Silently Kasawayo watched. She knew that Kora was mortal, and so had little chance in such an unequal combat. So well did she know how the battle would go, that she did not even cry out when the serpent’s tail gave the brave Kora a terrible blow that stretched him dead at her feet. For a moment she watched with a strange look in her eyes. She knew that, did he not truly love her, he would still lie as one dead. But it was not so, for, as she watched, and the moonlight touched Kora’s dead face, his shadow left his mortal body and leapt straightway into Kasawayo’s outstretched arms. The serpent-god, seeing this happen before his eyes, roared with rage till the cavern shook and the rocks around trembled as though from an earthquake. Going forward on his belly, the god slashed at Kora’s body with his tail. But it was only a dead body, and could not be hurt more than death had hurt it. Looking up, in his fearful rage, he saw Kasawayo and Kora’s spirit hand in hand as they rushed away along the seashore.
The first pale glimmer of dawn tinted the eastern skyline, and yet a few stars were shining, when the little Fijian children awoke in the villages. They all came running out of the hut doors in the village of Rumbo-Rumbo.
There was not a breath of wind stirring the palm trees that sheltered their hut groves. So they rushed off fast towards the sea to catch the fish in the shore lagoons. Suddenly, as they ran along and the Lukas (parrots) wheeled across the skies from the far-off mountains, they all stood perfectly still. It was a wonderful sight that met their gaze. For there, up in the sky, they distinctly saw the spirits of Kasawayo and Kora, with their large wings outspread, as they faded away with the stars far-off over the seas.
And to this very day, by the hut fires of the native villages, the frizzly-headed old chiefs tell the children how the handsome warrior Kora was seen in the arms of the beautiful Kasawayo, as they passed away, flying together into shadowland—ages and ages ago. And still the Fijians gaze with eyes of awe and complete reverence at the serpents that glide across the forest floor of their lovely isles. And if a chief should kill a bird with gold tipping its wings, loud are their lamentations.
A few days after my experiences in Fiji, I secured a berth on a fore-and-aft schooner that was bound for Samoa. After the usual discomfiture and rebellious irritation to one of my temperament when obeying the orders of disciplinary shipboard life, I arrived at Apia. The skipper, who had relieved the monotony of the voyage by telling me of his experiences when he sailed as mate under the notorious Captain Bully Hayes, gave me several pounds above my set wages, thus showing his appreciation of my violin-playing. I had often done my level best to extemporize suitable obligato to his vocal attempts when he invited me into the stuffy cuddy after eight bells. The mate died on the voyage across, and when we buried him in his hammock-shroud, the skipper, who read the burial service, had the best that was in him awakened. Like most men he had a kind, brotherly side to his rough exterior, and, as is usual with most men, his congenial side only revealed itself through feeling the near presence of the cold, poetic hand of death. I know his voice was tremulous when he said, “Let go!” and we softly dropped “Scotty” the mate into the calm depths of the hot, tropic seas, where he left a few bubbles behind him. Just before Scotty died, I held his hand and said a few kind things, and I like to fancy that his soul remembered and touched the skipper’s heart with a generous impulse so that I might arrive in Samoa with plenty of cash in my pocket.
Being wealthy and having an hereditary hatred for work, I mooched about for days, admiring the semi-poetic life of the natives, enjoying the generous fellowship of the truest democracy the world ever harboured or is ever likely to see. Then I met an aged mat-worshipper. First, I must say that mat-worship was a strange old Samoan custom that was still believed in by the aged chiefs when I was a boy. A bit of old tappa-cloth or fibre carpet was regarded as a sacred object (etua).