So huge were they that the gazers felt themselves pigmies in comparison. Each grave head bent slightly forward as though listening intently for something that should come up from the sea, and the great stone hands were crossed reverently on the massive stone breasts.
From the sheer edge of the cliff above leaped streams of sparkling water, which broke in mid-air, and swung to and fro in the breeze like veils of gauze, and swept constantly over the seated figures, and wrapped them in fragmentary rainbows.
In their grim everlasting expectancy the great stone gods were very terrible to look upon, even with the eyes of understanding. More than once the gazers found themselves glancing fearfully over their shoulders towards the sea, lest perchance the long-delayed answer to that unspoken questioning might be coming. The sudden confrontation with these mighty relics of a long-vanished civilisation conjured up thoughts which bated their words to whispers.
"This accounts for it," said Blair softly. "What an amazing sight in a cannibal island! What do you make of it, Stuart?"
Stuart had been eyeing the monster nearest him with keenly critical eyes.
"Peruvian, I should say. Of the time of the Incas—or perhaps earlier still. Yes, earlier probably. I see no suns. This is mighty curious, you know. The present natives cannot be descended from them. They are pure Polynesians. And yet"—following out his own train of thought—"I'm not so sure. Ha'o and Nai and some of the others show traces of something more. I have often wondered about it. This may explain. These"—nodding at the silent figures—"or their makers, fled their country, or perhaps got blown across, and founded a new civilisation here. Then the old race ran to seed and got lost among the dark men, and ages afterwards their cousins from the mainland come across to kidnap them."
"Odd enough to think of," said Blair, "and likely enough to be true. What were these figures for, do you suppose? Worship?"
"Worship, sacrifice. Down in the brush there we shall probably find the remains of their houses."
And they did, all overgrown and barely discernible, but ruins without a doubt, and of a city of great buildings. By dint of peeling off the superincumbent growths of the ages they even laid bare a piece of wall, huge squared blocks from which the creeping mosses and lichens had long since eaten out the mortar.
"We shall never get them to live here, that's certain," said Blair. "The place is alive with ghosts for them. It would be an uncommonly safe place for a mission-station, if safety were the only thing. But it's too far from the parish. I think we can use it, however," he nodded thoughtfully, with some of his far-reaching schemes in view. "How those little pigs would enjoy those big paw-paws!"