While he listened, a shadow passed over the man’s face, as when winds drive a dark cloud above a sunny plain. He removed his pipe thoughtfully to murmur:
“Ah, my poor Tamea! Dear child of the sun! Homesick already!” Then he came out on deck and stood by the weather rail, looking forward until he espied the figure of the singer stretched face downward, at full length, alongside the bowsprit, but snuggled comfortably in the belly of the jib. One arm enveloped the bowsprit; at each rise and fall of the Moorea’s long clipper bow, her feet, sandal-clad, beat the canvas in rhythm. And, because she was young and athrill with the music of the spheres, because the dark blue water purling under the schooner’s forefoot brought to her memories of the insistent, peaceful swish of the surf enveloping the outer reef at Riva, the girl Tamea sang:
“Behold! Tamea, Queen of Riva,
Has forsaken her mother’s people.
In her father’s great canoe called Moorea
After the mother of Tamea, who loved him,
Tamea sails over a cold sea
To the white man’s country.
Tamea is happy and curious.
But if the hearts in this new land