“Farewell, little goddess-maid!” I said.
“Farewell, O Papalagi!” she whispered, then she gave a jump and—splash! had dived headlong into the lagoon by our side.
“God, she’s committed suicide!” I thought, as I made to leap into the dark water. I could see only a few ripples where she had disappeared. I put forth my hands to dive, then stopped, for out in the middle of the lagoon up came a tangled mass of hair! It was Fanga’s head. I saw her swimming arms and dusky shoulders twinkle in the moonlight. She was simply swimming across the lagoon, taking the nearest cut back to her native village!
When I awoke in my Suva lodging-house next morning, I discovered that my violin was cracked. But for the scratches on my legs and the wisps of hair from dead men’s grey beards clinging to my blue serge suit, I might have concluded that the whole of my night’s adventures were the outcome of a nightmare. About a week after my adventure in that heathen monastery and with Fanga Loma, I met a chief who claimed to be the son of King Thakombau. He was an intelligent man, and told me a lot about the doings of the old cannibalistic times. When I told him what I had experienced in the heathen monastery of the Kai Tholos, he gave me a hint as to what might have happened to me had I not made my escape. It was this son of Thakombau’s who told me many interesting heathen legends. One legend in particular struck my imagination, for it was about the old goddess Kasawayo, but was so different from the impersonation I had seen in the Kai Tholos temple, that I will do my best to give an impression of all that I heard in the following chapter.
CHAPTER IX. KASAWAYO AND THE SERPENT
(A FIJIAN LEGEND FOR YOUNG AND OLD CHILDREN)
A Goddess in the Garb of Mortality—A Garden of Eden—Temptation—Kasawayo and Kora the Mortal—The Battle—Flight to Shadowland.
AGES ago a goddess of shadowland sickened of the sacred halls of the passionless gods. One day a great desire to be a mortal entered her heart, for she had once been a mortal herself and had had the desires of mortality, but knew it not. She was sitting by her cavern door, gazing across the starlit singing seas of paradise, when she made up her mind to desert shadowland.