Auwe te poki, e—’
“The sail of my daughter,
Never before broken by the force of foreign clans!
Ever victorious in all her fights,
She would not drink the poison waters in the cup of obsidian glass.
“We all felt depressingly the sudden reversal of sentiment, and, when Taaroa had finished, Miss Dorey said she would like to leave. She shivered. The air was a little cold, but the Rapa Nuiis built up their fires and prepared to dance through the night. We whites, with Timi Linder, went home with a promise to meet at noon to-morrow for the egg ceremony. As Timi and I rode to Vaihu, seven or eight miles it was, he remarked that Taaroa had gotten much handsomer while he was away. He asked if she was still friendly with Willis, and I explained things. Timi didn’t make much of those troubles, but ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘they’ll all sail away to-morrow, and her husband can lease her to me.’”
Llewellyn hesitated. His story had been long. The lamps were out.
“There isn’t much more,” he said, apologetically though pleadingly. “When the race started at Orongo, we four, the English people, Willis, and I, went to the sea where we could watch the swimming. Timi Linder stayed with Ure Vaeiko and Pakomeo to award the prize. The runners came swarming down the cliff, some taking paths around and others trying to climb straight down. They wore loin-cloths only, and were mad as fighters with the excitement. Some fell but got up, and away they went, and some leaped into the sea from the bluff at forty or fifty feet high. The rocks were about a hundred fathom off shore, and that is a short swim for Kanakas. But it was the carrying the egg whole and getting up the bluff again that tested skill and luck. Well, it was over in a little while, and when we returned to Orongo, Matatoa, the husband of Taaroa, had been made the choice of the god Meke Meke for the year.
“As the passengers had their goods already stowed, but intended to go aboard the schooner before nightfall to wait for a favoring wind, Willis proposed that we all go back to the beach and have a last bath together. Most of the Rapa Nuiis went with us, and the victor and Taaroa among them. We all wore pareus and I tell you those two young people made a magnificent pair. That year and a half on Rapa Nui had done wonders for Willis. He was like a wrestler, and Miss Dorey in her pareu was a picture.
“Some one spoke of the spring under the sea, and proposed that we all drink from it. It was like that one at Nâgone. The fresh water runs into the ocean about ten feet under the ocean at the bottom of the cliff. Willis shouted out that he had never had a drink under the sea, and would try it first. Nobody, they said, had been down there for years, but in war time it had been a prized spot. Willis was a good diver, and down he went while we watched from the rocks twenty feet above on which we climbed. Now, to stay down there long enough to drink, some one else had to stand on your shoulders, and some one else on theirs. Willis plunged in, and, of those sporting in the water, Taaroa was first to follow him down. Her husband, the winner, was the second, and we, laughing and joking about the American’s heavy burden, waited for him to come up spluttering.