“The ahu of Hananakou was a grim sight in the moonlight. About eighty yards long, and but four wide, it loomed on the sea-cliff like the fort at Gibraltar, black, broken, and remindful of the past. The front was of huge blocks of fire-rocks, all squared as neatly as the pyramids, and carved in curious faces and figures barely traceable in the brilliant night. Among these was the swastika or fylfot. Human remains filled the inner chambers, and bones were lying loose among the boulders. The professor took my arm—he was in his sixties then—and led me to where a fallen statue lay prone on the steep slope toward the sea.
“‘Agassiz guessed it,’ he said quietly. ‘The Pacific continent once extended due west from South America to here, pretty nearly from the Galapagos to the Paumotus. The people who built these statues were the same as the Incas of Peru. In my room now is a drawing made by my daughter of the figures on the rocks at Orongo. I have its duplicate on a piece of pottery I dug up in an Inca grave. There is the swastika as in ancient Troy, India, and in Peru. The Maori legend known from Samoa to New Zealand was correct. Probably it came from Rapa Nui people who survived the cataclysm that lowered the continent under the ocean.
“Instinctively I turned my head towards the great land of South America now two thousand miles away, and in the moonbeams I saw Willis clasping the English girl’s hand. Her face was close to his and her eyes had happy tears in them. A jealous feeling came over me. As a matter of fact, I never made love to a white woman since I left Europe. I’m satisfied with the part-native who don’t ask too much time or money. But, by God, I envied him that night, and when we returned to Queen Korato’s palace I hated him for his luck.
The mood of Llewellyn was growing more self-accusatory, and his voice less audible. Perhaps Aaron Mandel, an old pearl-buyer, had heard him tell the story before, because he interrupted him, and said:
“What the devil’s the good of openin’ old graves, T’yonni?”
He said it, indulgently, calling him by his familiar Tahitian name, but Llewellyn was set to tell it all. I felt again and more certainly that it was confession, and excused my impatient interest by the need of his making it.
“Let him finish!”
Llewellyn’s gaze was that of a man relieved from imminent prison.
“It’s not my grave, Mandel,” he said; “I could not foresee the future. When I got back to Vaihu, Tokouo brought me some rum and water, and Taaroa sat on the mat with us. She had questions in her black eyes, and I had to answer something after what I had heard her say to Willis.
“‘We went to Hananakou,’ I began.