“Where has father gone, Muzzie?” she said in English, and then rapidly added in Samoan, “Ua alu ia i moana?” (“Has he gone upon the sea?”)
“Yes, Loisé. He has gone upon the sea, but will soon return. Where is Mâlu?”
“Here, lady,” replied a woman's voice in the soft Samoan tongue, and a pleasant-faced, grey-haired woman of fifty came down the steps, and took the child from her mother's arms, and as she did so, whispered, “The tide hath turned to the ebb. ”{*}
* Note by the Author.—Nearly all Polynesians and
Micronesians believed most firmly that the dissolution of
soul from body always (excepting in cases of sudden death by
violence or accident) occurred when the tide is on the ebb.
From a long experience of life in the Pacific Islands, the
writer is thoroughly imbued with and endorses that belief.
The idea of the passing away of life with the ebbing of the
tide will doubtless seem absurd to the European and
civilised mind, but it must be remembered that an inborn and
inherited belief, such as this, does, with many so-called
semi-savage races, produce certain physical conditions that
are well understood by pathologists.
“Ay, good Mâlu. I know it. So keep the child within thy own room, so that the house may be quiet.”
Old Mâlu, who had nursed Mrs. Raymond's mother, bent her head in assent, and went inside, and her mistress sat down in one of the cane-work lounge chairs on the wide verandah and closed her eyes, for she was wearied, physically and mentally. Her nerves had been strained greatly by the events of the day, and now the knowledge that within a few feet of where she sat, a life was passing away, and a woman's heart was breaking, saddened her greatly.
“I must not give way,” she thought. “I must go and see how the wounded men are doing.”
But ere she knew it, there came the low but hoarse murmuring cries of myriad terns and gulls flying homewards to the land, mingled with the deep evening note of the blue mountain pigeons; and then kindly slumber came, and rest for the troubled brain and sorrowing heart.
She had slept for nearly an hour when a young native girl servant, who had been left to wait upon Mrs. Marston, came quickly but softly along the verandah and touched her arm.
“Awake, Marie,{*} and come to the white lady.”