Quicker grows the clapping of hands, louder shrieks Ngawai, fiercer become her movements. She stands opposite the dancers: she leads, and all follow her movements.
A short cry, a hiss, a head thrown back, a wild yell, call forth ever new, ever graceful, ever circling, combinations, bendings, and turnings. Whirling, circling, slapping, stamping, becomes the dance; rolling arms, back-bending heads, moving hips, and heaving breasts—fiercer yet grow Ngawai’s shrieks, swifter her movements, undistinguishable the mass of the ever-whirling pois. Full of laughter and grace is every movement of the vast living body of weaving, rolling, and bending, figures; joy is in every face, light in the eyes of all. Like black waves floats the hair around the heads, the bosoms heave quicker and quicker, and the breathing mingles with the song of the spectators—: a vast, beautiful, ever-moving body is the whole, with its ever-circling pois.
A loud and joyful cry—and all is over, abrupt, with one thud.
In the sudden silence the dancers flutter about, and settle on the ground like a swarm of birds; loud is the applause, and Ngawai, with laughing eyes and quick-heaving bosom, stands before us, and drops the little poi at our feet.
TRADITION
O, listen who will deny the truth of the old gods? Who can deny the truth of the Sun-god, Maui?
Everyone is asleep in the whare-puni, asleep, too, is Ngawai.
Murmuringly had Matapo recited how the world was created; deep into the night had he muttered the wisdom known only to himself and a few still living Tohungas, the wisdom of generations of gods and ancestors and heroes of Hawaiki. Then he, too, had dropped off to sleep, and everything is loneliness and blackness, for Hine-nui-te-po has finished her great repast, and has devoured the world once more. Only the fire splutters now and again with flickering life, and answeringly a dim sparkle springs forth from the eyes of the old ancestor.
Once, ha, once the gods were living at Hawaiki; they were the ancestors of mankind; they are human beings in the faith of the Maori people, heroes, who were the authors of superhuman deeds.