“O beautiful white womans, Mitia Kaloah! You belief in good old heathen tiki-priest Rimbo? He good chiefs, able to bless yous with love, allee samee, though he no Clistian priest. If you no belief in great Rimbo and tells papalagi [white men] where I, the great god Pulutu, am standing, hid in forest, yous life be cursed for evers and evers!”
After a pause, in which the girl-child looked up at the hideous idol like one staring in a trance, the hollow-sounding voice continued:
“O answers me! Do you believes? Will you tell misslennaries [missionaries] that Pulutu stand by the sea at Temarorio? Will you get poor old priest Rimbo, who am great tapu mans, shut up in calaboose?”
“O great Pulutu of the forest, god of the great chief Rimbo, I promise you that none shall know that you are here by the sea at Temarorio,” said Waylao. Then she quickly continued: “But will you tell me all that I must know? Is it best that I should desert those who have loved me from childhood?”
Spake the idol: “O beautiful Marama, let the great Rimbo kiss you lips three times, and do tings he wish to do; then you become tapu. So will you prayers be answered. But first you must go to Misser Ranjo’s store and get for great god Pulutu two large bottles of the zottest te-rom [rum], one bottle of perandi [brandy], twos tins of ’densed milk, one poun tabak [tobacco], and two green eyes and nice paint.”[[2]]
[2]. Ranjo sold glass eyes and paint to the heathen natives, who had old idols hidden in the forest waiting to be renovated.
Waylao was dumbstruck with astonishment, notwithstanding her superstitious belief, to hear an idol should want rum and unrecorded things.
Something in her manner must have been observed by that heathen deity, something showing that his demands were unwisely put.
“O maids that kneels in prayer to me, turn thy head, lookes behind you so that you may be still blessed with great faith in great Rimbo.”
Waylao at this turned her head and looked over her shoulder, but, turning back too quickly, observed old priest Rimbo sneaking out of that decayed, ant-infested hollow inside of the huge idol wherein he had hidden!