As he opened that little door and peered forth, his tawny, wrinkled face looked like some tattered map of thwarted human schemes.
Waylao trembled before him. From far came the muffled sounds of tribal drums beating the sunset down. Overhead the twilight nightingale (O le manu-ao) commenced to pour forth his silvery evening song. To Waylao’s superstitious soul it was no melodious bird welcoming her to Rimbo’s enchanted abode, but a good omen, that bird’s song, as it sat somewhere up in the banyans. It sang of old memories, of its long-ago dead girl-lover and cherished vows, ere some vengeful god or goddess had touched the brave chief’s brow and turned him into a sad, twilight-singing nightingale. Why, the forest itself was a world of mythological wonder: the giant bread-fruit trees were the mighty brooding bodies of long dead, bronzed warriors, their shaggy heads bursting forth into gnarled boughs whereon, as the summers passed, hung their dead aspirations—in golden fruits.
On wild nights when the typhoons blew the great gods and goddesses, Tano, Pulutu, Oro, Tangaloa, would wail through that forest from the halls of Polotu.
The enchanted seas rolled by that forest—seas where the golden sunsets sank, to be caught by the hands of the sea-gods and fashioned into mighty nets to catch the heathen souls of the day’s dead. For under those dark waters of the Pacific slept the old-time chiefs and chiefesses curled up in the old, broken moons—their coffins—or entangled in the long dead sunsets as they awaited the heathen god’s trump of doom. It was a wondrous creed of poetic lore, writ on a bible whose pages held the faded sunsets and a million moons and stars; pages wherefrom old Rimbo drank the very breath of his existence.
“What you wants?” said that old heathen as he stared at Waylao, who stood before him holding in one hand the bag of goods she had purchased for her mother at Ranjo’s stores.
He looked with astonishment on the pale-faced girl. He pulled his shoulders up majestically. The old wretch was evidently flattered at receiving so fair a client. His wrinkled brow smoothed out. “You Cliston girls?” he wailed, as the map of wrinkles suddenly returned and extended right up towards the northern territory of his domed head.
“No, great chief Rimbo,” responded Waylao, realising the full meaning of the old chief’s suspicions. Once more the old priest peered over the girl’s shoulders into the deep shadows of the forest. Satisfied that the visit was no trick, no attempt to find out, spy and betray the whereabouts of his wooden idols, he looked steadily at the girl and said: “You wanter fortune tole?”
Waylao nodded her head.
“Tome! follows you me,” said that witchman, as he stalked on in front and beckoned the trembling maid to follow.
“Yous quite sures the grog lady, kinds papalagi, sends yous to great chief Rimbo?” he murmured once again, as he suddenly stood still and looked about suspiciously.