“At that moment,” said the old priest, “a canoe which had been cunningly making its way to the shore, as if by a prearranged signal, suddenly took the breakers and came careening upon the sand. Out of it stepped Taipi, a woman of that red-headed tribe of Tahuata, arranged her kilt of tapa, and advanced. She was like an apparition, but fatal to my count. She was a moi kanahau, beautiful and strong, and the first woman who had ever come except as a prisoner from that fierce island. But she was stronger in her desires than any man. She was unbelieving and unafraid of sacred things. A hundred men sprang forward to greet Taipi. American, she was as the red jasmine, as the fire of the oven, odorous and lovely, but hot to the touch and scorching to know. That woman laughed at the men, and, as if word had been sent her, took her place among the women. She seized a candlenut and threw it exactly into the unholy hoana.
“‘O men of Oomoa,’ she cried, ‘so you fear that women may paddle faster and better than you! Haametau hae! You are cowards. Look, I have come a night and a day alone, and no shark god has injured me and I am not weary.’
“There followed a shower of candlenuts into the demon trough, as the stones from the slings in battle. We were beaten, as youth ever defeats age when new gods are powerful. Our day and the power of all tapus waned and ended soon. Once in the canoes those women made us release the tapu against their eating bananas and, later, pig. In a thousand years no Marquesan woman had tasted a banana or eaten pig. They were for the men and there were good reasons known to the gods. But let woman leave ever so little way the narrow path of obedience and of doing without things that are evil for her, and she knows no limits. She is without the koekoe, the spirit that is in man. The race has fallen on sorrow.”
He sat down on his powerful haunches and chanted an improvisation about the lost splendor. Low and mournful, the psalm of a Jeremiah, his deep voice rumbled as he fixed his dark eyes on the great globes of the breadfruit hanging by the plaited roof of the hut.
And through an opening of the forest came the two women of his household, Very White and Eyes of the Great Stars, heavily laden with their morning’s catch of fish. They came tripping over the green carpet of the forest, laughing at some incident of their fishing, and threw down beside him the strung circles of shining ika, large and brilliant bonito, the mackerel of brilliancy, and the maoo, the gay and gaudy flying-fish.
“Oh, ho! sorcerer,” said I. “Did ever men match with the cunning of these scaly ones with greater luck? The stones are ready for their broiling.”
The taua made a wry face and stirred his sauce. He dipped a popo into it and ate it greedily, bones and all.
“E, e!” he said and spat out the words. “Piau! The women catch their own fish now.”