Opposite the spacious mission grounds the worshippers were gathering beneath two gnarled banian-trees, giant-like in height and spread. Behind them a long hedge of bananas bordered the cocoanut plantation of the church, and across the narrow road rose the chapel, the priests' residence and the nuns' house, with several school buildings now empty because of the French anti-clerical law.
Exploding Eggs in his new finery and the visiting chief from Vait-hua found welcome among the waiting natives, while Titihuti of the tattooed legs took her seat beside me. She had combed her Titian tresses and anointed them with oil till they shone like the kelp beds of Monterey. Her tunic was of scarlet calico, and she carried in her hand a straw hat with a red ribbon, to put on when she entered the church. “Kaoha!” I said to her, and she smiled, displaying her even, white teeth.
Suddenly, looking past her at the church, my eye caught a sight that transfixed me. In the misty light I saw the Christ upon the cross as on Calvary. The sublime figure was in the agony of expiration, and at the foot of the cross stood the ever faithful mother and the loving John in attitudes of amazement and grief. The reality was startling; for the moment I forgot all about me.
But Titihuti coughed, and I saw her tattooed legs and felt the rough roots of the banian under me, and I was back in the courtyard. The spectacle of the Crucifixion was raised on a basalt platform fully twenty feet long. The figures were of golden bronze, and the cross was painted white. Over it hung the branches of a lofty breadfruit-tree, a congruous canopy for such a group. The Bread of Life, in truth.
A tablet on the cross bore the inscription:
“1900
Le Christ Dieu Homme
Vit
Regne
Commande
Christo Redemptori
Jubilé 1901
Atuona.”
“The tiki of the true god,” said Titihuti, observing my gaze, and crossed herself with the fervor of the believer in a new charm.
On the roof a score of doves were cooing as we filed into the church. There were bas-reliefs of cherubim and seraphim over the doorway, fat, distorted bodies with wings a-wry, yet with a celestial vision showing through the crude workmanship. A loop-holed buttress on either side of the facade spoke of the days when the forethought of the builders planned for defence in case a reaction of paganism caused the congregation to attack the Christian fathers.
Inside the doorway a French nun in blue robes tugged at a rope depending from the belfry, and above us the bells rang out from two tiny towers. She looked curiously at me and my savage companion, her pale peasant's face hard, homely, unhealthy; then she kicked at a big dog who was trying to drink the holy water from the clam-shell beside the door. “Allez, Satan!” she said.
The benetier, large enough to immerse an infant, was fixed to a board, a fascinating, blackened old bracket, carved with the instruments of torture, the nails, the spear, the scourge, and thorns. Ivory and pearl, stained by a century or more, were inlaid. As I dipped my hand in the shell a huge lizard that made his nest in the hollow of the bracket ran across my knuckles.