“Tapu!” he said, nervously.
“Tuitui!” began the moa taputoho. “Be silent!” and in a staccato manner pronounced his divination. His tone was orotund and dignified, and impressive of sincerity. The words were symbolic, and of other generations, and Song waited until he had finished to translate them. Before he could do this, the taua said, “Apae!” a word of dismissal, and retired. Song seized me by the hand as I went toward the curtain, and pulled me away; but, for a second, I had a glimpse of a rude, basalt altar built against the trunk of the tree, and on it a stone image before which was a heap of fruit. I was directed speedily away from the banyan, and not until we had mounted our horses and galloped a hundred feet did the convict answer my question.
“The moa taputoho said that this girl will offend the god if she marries a haoe, a foreigner, and that she knows already how the god will punish her if she leaves her own valley of Taaoa.”
And flinging out the words as we pounded up the hill, it was as if the maker of moonshine was more prophetical than the taua himself, or was a most interested mouthpiece, for he put into them a malevolence missing from the aged hermit’s voice. That had been majestic though forboding, while the intonation of Song of the Nightingale was personal and harsh. Maybe he hated Lutz as did Lemoal. Le Brunnec corroborated my suspicion.
“Lutz found him stealing a demijohn of rum, and had him sent to prison for several months,” said the Breton. “But, granted that every one hates the German,” he continued, “you are wasting your sympathy and time. I predict that Lutz will get Mademoiselle Narbonne, but that the taua and his magic will snare her finally. These people are born to be unhappy and to die under our Christian dispensation.”
So, from day to day, the rumor of her dismaying condition spread, until it was known to almost everyone of the few thousand Marquesans in all the islands, and to all others except Lutz. His wooing had not ceased, and when the day’s work was done at Tahauku, and his evening meal despatched, as for months, he thought nothing of the ten slippery miles in the pitchy blackness to and from the home of his Golden Maid. His hoof-beats entered into my dreams, and after midnight I often awoke as they resounded on the little bridge across the stream by the Catholic Church, Poor devil! He was to pay dear for his brief dream.
CHAPTER XX
Holy Week—How the rum was saved during the storm—An Easter Sunday “Celebration”—The Governor, Commissaire Bauda and I have a discussion—Paul Vernier, the Protestant pastor, and his Church—How the girls of the valley imperilled the immortal souls of the first missionaries—Jimmy Kekela, his family—A watch from Abraham Lincoln.
HOLY Week passed in a riot of uncommon amusement. Its religious significance—the most sacred period of the year both for Catholics and Protestants—was emphasized by priest and preacher with every observance of the church, but the lay white harked back to the mood of the ancient feast of spring and drew the natives with them. Permits to buy rum and wine were much sought for by the Marquesans, to whom drink was forbidden. The governor was of an easy disposition, and few who had the price of a dame-jeanne of rum or wine failed to secure it. As Lutz, the German trader at Tahauku, the adjoining valley, was the only importer of intoxicants, the canoes were active between our beach of Atuona and the stone steps at Tahauku, while others rode a-horse or walked. On Holy Thursday an uninformed new-comer might have pronounced the Marquesans a bustling race with a liquid diet.