My sleepy gaze wandered across to the mistress of the kava bowl. Surely that was not a "ver' fine gal," I told myself. I blinked and looked again. She was middle-aged and fat. Then I rubbed my eyes hard and tried to recall where I had seen that broad, good-natured face before. Ah—the duenna whose lap held my head when I dropped off to sleep! But how could that be when her lap was still under my head and her fingers stroking my temples? Perhaps she had a twin. I gave my eyes a final dig and turned them upwards. A lady's lap is not the point of vantage that a connoisseur would choose from which to get the most favourable view of her face, but—yes, Tofa undoubtedly was right. Fanua was certainly a "ver' fine gal," quite the finest I had seen in all these "Isles of Fair Women."
"We will start for Leone at sunrise," I directed Tofa, and sat up and emptied the proffered kava cup according to the dictates of Samoan etiquette.
It seems that the duty of loma-loma-ing the brows of tired wayfarers is a duty of the taupo which takes precedence even of kava-making, so that on the arrival of the hastily-summoned Fanua—I being then asleep—the transfer of laps was made, the duenna substituting as drink-mixer.
We pooled the contents of my knapsack and the chiefly larder and dined sumptuously on canned salmon, breadfruit-pate-de-foie-gras sandwiches, boiled taro, shrimps and bananas. This over, we smoked cigarettes—mine, all of a three-day supply—and when darkness had fallen, guided by a hunchback with a torch, set out for the dancing place by the sea. We did not stop on the smooth crescent of beach, as I had anticipated, but continued along to where it joined a cliffy promontory and gave way to a jumble of crags and rocks, against which dashed the full force of a tumultuous surf.
The night was starry but moonless. By the light of the sputtering candle-nut brand in the hand of the dwarf and an occasional spurt of phosphorescence from a shattering wave, we followed the well-worn path up among the crags to where it seemed to come to an end at an opening in the rock scarcely larger than the man-hole of an underground conduit. The hollow mutter of the sea welled up from the cavernous depths, but without pausing the hunchback dropped confidently in, showering his knotted bronze shoulders with sparks in the quick descent. Just long enough for me to clamber down beside him he held the torch, then sent it spinning, trailed by a comet-like wake of embers, over a ledge to be doused in the water which plashed below. In Stygian darkness, I was listening to the soft thuds of the feet of my companions as, one by one, they dropped down from above, when suddenly there came a crash against the seaward side of the grotto, a swirling rush of phosphorescent water rushed in and, against the fluttering waves of blue-green light that played upon the rocky walls, appeared the lithe brown body of Fanua weaving in the undulating sinuosities of the "swimming" siva.
I had just time to note that the lovely little taupo, unadorned by official head-dress or garlands, was dancing only in a scant lava-lava of tappa which encircled her waist in a precarious fringe, when the light died down and the swimming siva became for the moment a dusky silhouette against the jagged patch of star-studded purple which marked the seaward opening of the grotto. Then a soft hand sought mine and I was led through the darkness to where a thick stack of smooth mats had been piled, upon which the members of our little party were beginning to settle at their ease. As I lounged back luxuriously upon the springy pandanus, Tofa came wriggling in on one side to "make talk" for me, as he explained, while on the other gentle fingers—the mates of the guiding ones that still held my right hand in their unrelinquishing clasp—patted my cheek to soft and iterated murmurs of "alofa oi," "I like you."
"Tell the young lady on my right," I began to Tofa—and then, all unheralded, the wonder befell.
Fanua was still swimming in graceful pantomime across the purple star-patch, when a crash louder than the previous one sounded against the outer wall and the mouth of the opening was blotted by the advancing wave. Again came the flutters of tremulous light upon the dark walls, quickly to be followed by a deep-mouthed gurgling growl from immediately beneath the ledge on which we reclined. Then there was a quick rush of damp air in the grotto, and, with a great "whouf!" a bright fountain of phosphorescent spray was projected from a small hole in the rocky floor immediately in front of the swaying taupo.
Evidently this phenomenon, which occurred only with the largest waves, had been awaited by both audience and dancer. Rhythmic smiting of thighs began as the growls broke out below, and to this, and the beating of a drum improvised from a rolled mat, Fanua leapt into the jet of spouting golden mist and, for the four or five seconds during which it played, lashed out in that climacteric movement of the swimming siva in which the dancer is supposed to be riding the crest of a rushing comber. Flailing arms and flying hair represented the eddying foam, while quick, jerking forward movements of the shoulders gave the suggestion of impulse to a body that never moved from the heart of the floating cloud of luminous mist. One supreme flutter of tremulous movement, rippling up from the toes and running out at the finger tips as a series of waves of motion pulse down a shaken rope, told that the swimmer had slid from her wave-crest to the waters of the still lagoon. The jet died down as the pressure from below was released by the receding wave, but the swaying body, lined with glittering runlets of pale phosphorescence, continued to vibrate in silhouette across the star-gleams shot from the patch of heavens beyond the grotto's seaward mouth.
The jet of spray was due to the presence of a "blow-hole" in the grotto. Under the ledge which we occupied was another cave—a cavern within a cavern—and when the latter was filled by the wash from a wave the compressed air forced a jet of spume up through the small vent opening into the main grotto. The unusual brightness of the luminous fountain was due, doubtless, partly to the darkness and partly to the fact that a heavy scum of phosphorescence had accumulated in the lower cavern.