Those old chiefs opened their mouths in astonishment. That much I noticed as I instinctively turned my head to see the effect of my act. The very tattoo engraving that adorned the faces of the aged priests had wrinkled up into distorted bunches. In another moment each look of rage and horror had resolved into a grim grimace—they were all grinning. I was saved! The Fijian race was endowed with humour! No words of mine can adequately describe all I felt at that moment. My relief was intense. I knew that, had those priests been as humourless as are British disciples in their creeds, I had been done for. God knows, my head, that now recalls those old days, would have decorated a Fijian’s girdle, or would be a pinch of dust beneath the South Sea palms, or possibly have been discovered ornamenting a native hut, and by now be on show, exhibited in some British anthropological museum, as a fine specimen of the skull of primitive man.
As the maid continued to rub my face with her soft nose (the customary salutation of the Fijians), I felt much relieved.
“Awaie, le oa taki!” she murmured.
Then, in response to the wish of that subterranean audience, I placed my violin to my chin and commenced to play a weird chant to her eyes. It had to be done, I knew. Ah, how I played! My instrument wailed out Wagner’s “Swan Song,” then I finished up with a Band of Hope hymn. And all the while the maid fawned on me like a cat, looked into my eyes, stroked my hand that swayed the violin bow, and gazed in wonder on the other that travelled up and down the fingerboard of my instrument.
Suddenly I seemed to be whirled away on the roar and thunder of some invisible Niagara Falls. Forked lightning seemed to flicker down the corridors of my brain. I knew that it was the fumes of that cursed kava beginning to work on the emotional temperament! The world seemed to wobble on its orbit. I made a creditable effort, I am sure, to steady myself; then I seemed to have leapt out of myself—I had clutched the maid, and in some awful delirium of ecstasy was whirling with her in the heathenish mekee-dance!
I may not tell all that occurred at that enforced professional engagement, no, not till Time has finished its onward flight and the blind sun stares on the melancholy past. One thing I can confess to, and that is, I had made up my mind to escape at the first opportunity. Opposite me was the tunnel-way wherethrough I had entered. Often, as the clamouring audience rose to encore the dancers, their shadows fell on me and across the cavern walls; but my chance seemed never to arrive. Still I played on and watched, and still the maid whom I had embraced sang a weird melody of wailful sweetness into my ears.
Once more I was compelled to imbibe the “sacred” potion of kava, and once more my digestive apparatus groaned within me.
I thought I must surely be dreaming when all the fierce, watching eyes of the priests, who stared at the goddess-maid and myself, suddenly dropped from their sockets and twinkled on the cavern’s floor! This strange effect was caused, not only through some obliquity of my kava-stricken vision, but also because a puff of wind suddenly blew down the tunnel-way’s entrance and swayed the rows of coco-nut-oil lamps into shadowy gleams. As soon as normal conditions returned, my senses seemed to readjust themselves.
Suddenly the sacred personage, Kasawayo, who had stood aside since I had been made taboo, stepped forward and cried: “Alaka!” (Hold!)
This act of Kasawayo’s gave me considerable relief. I saw that she had some great influence over the priests; for they immediately ceased their hubbub and their remarks, I am sure, of a debased nature.