CHAPTER XIV. TISSEMAO AND THE CUTTLE-FISH
Impressionistic Scene in Nuka Hiva—Tissemao listens to the Luring Voice of a Cuttle-fish—The Love-Stricken Cuttle-fish—When Crabs are Brave.
THE pagan city of Nuka Hiva was silent. The tired sentinel stars were creeping homeward. Dawn had already arisen from her silvery couch, her soft robe, cut out of the warm western winds, wrapped around her, her sandals dipped in light as she stood on the skyline, a few stars still plucking her dusky hair. Then that wonderful enchantress, who awakens the ages, stepped tiptoe across the horizon’s shadow hills, the echoes of her footfalls winging the silence of the tropic seas. Those echoes, colliding with the granite hills of South Sea fairy-land, rustled the magical shadows of the sylvan hollows, then, touching the winged nymphs and petals of the flamboyants and ndrala blossoms, sped onward into the deeper glooms of the forests. An aged cockatoo who had spent its best years as a vassal of the god Atua Mao, looked sidelong at the golden gleams of the eastern sky and called out hoarsely:
“Talofa! Aloah! Awake, O birds of the forest! Morn is here! Arise!”
Now, all this happened in full view of a little heathen village by a mossy slope near Tai-o-hae. And who was it could see so strange a fairy-land in the birth of a new day breaking across the ranges? It was Tissemao, the Marquesan maid!
Tissemao was up very early that morning. She had been with her little brother Noko-noko, fishing for reatos in the blue lagoon by the bay. And Noko, burdened with fishy wealth, had hurried back home to his village hut that stood in the shadows of the mountains of Atnana, leaving his sister alone. As Tissemao dangled her feet in the cool waters of the ocean the golden light was stealing from the eyes of sunrise; it touched the surface of the big moani ali (ocean) that shone like a mighty mirror that stretched to the horizon. Suddenly Tissemao felt something pull at her toes which were dangling in the sea. Looking down to see what it could be, she gave a cry of surprise. And no wonder; for a Cuttle-fish poked its head out of the sea, and said:
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, Tissemao, but we’ve all been swimming about here a long time, for we can see your shadow in the waters, and really it is very beautiful.”
Tissemao blushed to hear such praise. Looking down, she saw that it was quite correct, for there, in the water, shone her image as clear as though it was mirrored in a sheet of glass. Clad in her coloured tappa holaku (short chemise), hibiscus flowers in her mass of dusky hair, she really did make a pretty picture.
The Cuttle-fish, putting on its sweetest smile, said: