the Mountain and the Swamp came from the hand of the Great Father?” (A pause, and again, “Yes, yes,” from many voices.) “And what good has come of it? Here is the Mountain; yonder is the Swamp, as they were from the beginning; and what the better are we that the swamp has been flooded and the mountain drenched with the blood of our fathers? Hatred has been tried from the beginning of time, and has failed. Let us now, my children, try Love, as the Great Father counsels us to do.”
A murmur of decided applause followed the old man’s speech, and Ongoloo, seizing him by both shoulders, gazed earnestly into his withered face. Had they been Frenchmen, these two would no doubt have kissed each other’s cheeks; if Englishmen, they might have shaken hands warmly; being Polynesian savages, they rubbed noses.
Under the influence of this affectionate act, a number of the warriors ran off, fetched their gods, and threw them on the temple floor. Then Ongoloo, seizing a brand from the fire, thrust it into the loose cocoa-nut fibre, and set the pile in a blaze. Quickly the flames leaped into the temple thatch, and set the whole structure on fire. As the fire roared and leaped, Waroonga, with Tomeo and Buttchee, started a hymn. It chanced to be one which Zeppa had already taught the people, who at once took it up, and sent forth such a shout of praise as had never before echoed among the palm-groves of that island. It confirmed the waverers, and thus, under the influence of sympathy, the whole tribe came that day to be of one mind!
The sweet strains, rolling over the plains and uplands, reached the cliffs at last, and struck faintly on the ears of a small group assembled in a mountain cave. The group consisted of Zeppa and his son, Ebony and the pirate.
“It sounds marvellously like a hymn,” said Orlando, listening.
“Ah! dear boy, it is one I taught the natives when I stayed with them,” said Zeppa; “but it never reached so far as this before.”
Poor Zeppa was in his right mind again, but oh! how weak and wan and thin the raging fever had left him!
Rosco, who was also reduced to a mere shadow of his former self, listened to the faint sound with a troubled expression, for it carried him back to the days of innocence, when he sang it at his mother’s knee.
“Dat’s oncommon strange,” said Ebony. “Nebber heard de sound come so far before. Hope de scoundrils no got hold ob grog.”