"Never were seen such arms as in Samoa"
The lamp glow flashes on the glistening undulant bodies, high-light and shadow playing hide-and-seek in the dimples of cheek and shoulder and bosom as they bend and sway to the drone of the drums. Swift lances of light dart across thigh and shoulder, fluttering pennons of light streak down the tremulous arms, coruscant streamers of light shimmer along the lacquered leaves of the garlands. It is a poem of light and motion, the incarnation of a transcript from a volume of ancient verse.
Describe the siva! Not till I've proved my right to attempt it by painting the lily and gilding refinéd gold. It is a perfect thing of its kind, and that is enough to know.
So far as I know the Samoans do not attempt anything in the way of mimetic dances on the elaborate scale of those I have described as "staged" in the ancient crater in Tahiti. They do, however, have dances descriptive of harvesting coconuts, canoe races and swimming, while "duel" dances, in which the performers go through the motions of combat with native war knives, are features of nearly every siva. The Samoan is no less ready than the Tahitian to take advantage of the theatric effects at his disposal, and in the "standing" dances no taupo ever fails to make the most of the allurement of flitting in and out of patches of moonlight or torchlight and piquing the interest of the audience by pretending to reveal more of her charms when sheltered by the translucent curtain of the shadows.
My one most haunting memory of South Sea dancing is of the "swimming" siva as performed by a tantalizing minx of a taupo in the ghostly half-light of a grotto on the leeward shore of Tutuila. With a single native boy to act as guide and interpreter, I was proceeding by canoe and on foot from Judge Gurr's plantation at Mala-toa to Leone, on the opposite side of the island, to witness a game of native cricket. Wet, cramped and tired from three hours of steady bailing with my camera case in a dilapidated "outrigger" which had threatened to disintegrate at every lurch, we landed late in the afternoon at a tiny hamlet near the west end of the island and sought the Chief's house for rest and refreshment. Adept in the art of reviving flagging warriors, an elderly dame—the duenna of the taupo—took my tired head in her motherly lap after the native custom, made a few passes along neck and shoulder muscles with her soft magnetic fingers, and I dropped off into a deep sleep which was not broken till a round of clapping announced that kava was ready. I had heard of the magic of loma-loma in Hawaii, but this was my first opportunity to verify the claim that an hour of sleep induced by it was equal to an ordinary night's rest.
Feeling refreshed and fit but still drowsy, I called to Tofa to put my things together and get ready to take the road to Leone as soon as the kava drinking was over, hoping by a prompt start to avoid being caught in the bush after nightfall. The boy heard, but did not move from his Buddha-like pose against the rose-violet flare of the sunset.
"Fanua say that she will make swimmin' siva-siva on beach by'n'by if you stop tonight," he remarked inconsequentially, with his eyes fixed dreamily where the distant peaks of Upolou were thinning in the evening haze. "Fanua ver' fine gal."
"Who's Fanua?" I queried sleepily, beginning to drowse again as the magic fingers renewed their caressing pressure on my brow.
"Fanua taupo this villige. Ver' fine gal," Tofa replied, with the suspicion of a smile lurking at the corners of his handsome month.