“What you gotter there—moosic?”
“Yes,” I responded, as he eyed my violin.
“You no tafoa vale?”
“No; I’m a friend,” I replied, as I handed him a mark. This largesse changed his aggressive look into a broad smile of welcome. Following him, I entered his hut. I sat on his best mat and drank refreshing coco-nut milk. Suddenly we were disturbed by hearing loud grunts, heavy breathing, and smashing of twigs. In another moment an aged Samoan woman entered the hut. She was a fine-looking old woman, and had kind eyes. She was carrying a huge calabash of water beneath one arm. Its cumbersome weight did not deter her from further efforts—in the other hand she held a coco-nut, a basketful of fish—all alive O!—on her back a bunch of bananas, and between her teeth two fishing rods. She was O Le Tao’s industrious better half. She too made me welcome. Then pretty Cenerita, their daughter, arrived. She had pretty hair, and eyes that outshone the gleams of the three coco-nut-oil lamps, hanging from the hut’s low roof that night; for it all ended in O Le Tao asking me to stay the night with them.
When the hour was late, I felt very contented as I squatted by their homestead’s door by Cenerita’s side. Then the old chief commenced to tell me about the grand old freebooting times.
O Le Tao was over seventy years of age, and so was a reliable authority on the old sins and wonders of the heathen period of his palmy isles.
As the old chief spoke on, and his wife, Cenerita, and I sat by the doorway that faced the ocean, I too became transformed into a semi-heathen, the Samoan underworld becoming some dim, far-off reality to my brain. The moon shone over the dark waters, and the voices coming from the dark shore caves just below seemed to drum out muffled echoes from the old gods of shadowland, as I listened to all that O Le Tao told.
Cenerita had ceased to sing. We could faintly hear the o le sanga (red-winged nightingale) whistling its melodious song somewhere up in the mountain breadfruits. And still O Le Tao spoke on in this wise:
“O Papalagi, you must know and believe that, in those far-off days, the great spirits of shadowland did walk about the native villages by night. Often would the gods knock at the doors of the great Atuiis (high chiefs), bidding them strive for their mighty requirements; which were many. And sad enough for us in the great sacrificial month!” said O Le Tao after a pause; then he continued: “O white man, I must tell you that Lao-mio was my kinsman’s child and was a maid beautiful to gaze upon.”
“Doubtless,” I said, as he continued.