Hawaii (6 page)

"I am afraid it is for you the gods will send the rainbow," Tamatoa whispered.

"We have stood against them in the past, we can do so again."

"In the past they had canoes and spears. Now they have plans and plots. I don't feel hopeful."

"Are you afraid?" Teroro asked bluntly.

"Yes," the king confessed. "New ideas are afoot, and I can't seem to grasp them. How has the High Priest succeeded in manipulating our people so successfully?"

"New gods are popular, I suppose," Teroro hazarded. "When our people see many sacrifices they know the gods listen. It makes the island seem safer."

The king studied his brother for a moment, then asked cautiously, "Would it not be possible for you to accept their new god?"

"Impossible," Teroro said flatly. "I was born with the blessing of Tane. My father died defending Tane, and his father before him. I will never consider another god."

The king breathed deeply and said, "Those are my thoughts, too. But I am afraid the High Priest will destroy us, Teroro."

"How can he?" the impetuous young warrior demanded.

"By tricks, by plans, by clever ideas."

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"I'll trick himl" Teroro cried in frustration. Slashing his hand across his knee he muttered, "I'll trick his head into a mass of coconut jelly."

"That's why you mustn't attend this convocation," Tamatoa said. Teroro stood humbly before the king, yet spoke stubbornly: "Beloved brother, that is why I must go." Then, rising, he moved about the palace mats and said prophetically, "The High Priest will not destroy us. If we go down, he goes down with us. The whole island goes down. Brother, I swore to our father that I would protect you. I'm going to the convocation, to protect you. But I will give you my promise not to riot unless they strike you." "They won't strike me, Teroro. They'll strike you." "They had better strike with the speed of a hungry shark," Teroro laughed, and with this he walked out into the glorious high noon of Bora Bora, when the sun blazed overhead and filtered through palm fronds and breadfruit leaves, making soft patterns in the dust. Naked children called back and forth in their games, and fishermen hauled their canoes onto the beach. The soporific haze of noon, compounded of sunlight and dust was upon the island, and all things were beautiful. How restful this moment was, when the sun hung for a moment in midheaven, casting no shadows; flies droned and old women slept. Through the beautiful and dusty heat Teroro moved slowly to where the great ceremonial canoe of Bora Bora rested, and as he went he called, "Into the water! Into the water!"

From various grass houses along the lagoon, men appeared, drowsily wrapping themselves in tapa and swallowing the last bits of coconut. "Send for the priests to bless our canoe," Teroro called, and soon four holy men arrived, pleasure on their faces, for among all the functions of this island, there was nothing that exceeded in common joy the returning of the ceremonial canoe to its natural element. Palm fronds that had enclosed the seaward end of the long shed were taken down, and the twin hulls of the immense canoe were edged carefully toward the water. Then a rare old priest named Tupuna, his long white hair piled on his head and stuck with skewers, separated his beard, and with his eyes on the lagoon and on the open sea beyond, cried:

"Ta'aroa, god of the dark and sweeping sea, Ta'aroa, master of tempest and gentle calm, Ta'aroa, protector of men with vision of the reef, Ta'aroa, take Wair-for-the-West-Wind to thy bosom, Take it to Havaiki and to Moorea and to Nuku Hiva, To the Black Shining Road of Ta'aroa, To the Black Shining Road of Tane. To the Road of the Spider, To the Much-traveled Road of Ta'aroa. God of the dark and sweeping sea, Accept as thy gift, this canoe."

In silence and in spiritual exaltation, Teroro pulled away the last

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prop that bound his glorious canoe to land, and slowly it began to taste the lagoon, to dip its high-tiered stern into the gentle waves, and finally to ride upon the bosom of Ta'aroa, which was its home.

The young chiefs who would paddle the canoe that night now leaped into the two hulls and adjusted the movable seats that slid back and forth along the dugout sections. Teroro, grabbing his personal god-carved paddle, gave the canoe a mighty shove that sent it far into the lagoon, with him trailing his feet aft in the green waters. "Hoist saill" he cried. "We'll test the wind." And when a noonday breeze dropped down from the cliff, it caught the sail and began to move the great double-hulled canoe, and men paddled briskly, and soon with lightning speed Wait-for-the-West- wind hurtled across its home lagoon.

It flew like a special albatross, just dipping into the waves. It went like the wind-caught leaf of a breadfruit tree, skimming the waters. It went like a young woman hurrying to meet her lover, like the essence of the god Ta'aroa majestically inspecting the ramparts of his ocean. It sped like the spirit of a warrior killed in battle, on its swift journey to the everlasting halls of Tane. And it flashed across the lagoon like what it was: a miraculous, slim, double-hulled craft of Bora Bora, the swiftest ship the world at that time had ever known, capable of doing thirty knots in bursts, ten knots for days at a time, hour after hour; a huge, massive craft seventy-nine feet long, with a tiered stern twenty-two feet high and a solid platform slung across the hulls on which forty men or the statues of forty gods could ride, with pigs and pandanus and water stowed safely in the hidden innards.

"Wait for the west wind," the men who built the canoe had advised, "for it blows strong and sure from the heart of the hurricane." The north wind cannot be depended upon, and the east wind is no treasure, for it blows constantly, and the south wind brings nothing but irritating minor storms, never those that shake the earth, not storms that last for weeks at a time and which can be counted upon to drive a canoe to the farthest points of earth. Wait for the west wind! It blows from the heart of the hurricane. It is a wind to match this great canoe.

On this day, it was an ordinary eastern wind. Some of the world's sailors might even have counted it a considerable breeze, but to Bora Borans who longed for the westerly gale that could carry them even to distant Nuku Hiva, the day's wind was really nothing. But it did bear a hint of invitation, and so on the spur of the moment Teroro cried, "Through the reef!"

Wait-for-the-West- Wind was already doing better than fifteen knots, and a prudent navigator usually took his craft through this perilous reef at slowest speed, but on this sun-swept day Teroro shot his precious craft directly at the small opening that marked the dividing line between the placid green waters of the kgoon and the thundering blue ocean which pounded outside.

The canoe seemed to anticipate the impending crash of giant waves, for it tensed in the wind, cut a little deeper into the lagoon,

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and leaped toward the passageway through the reef. For an instant the crew could glimpse cruel fingers of gray coral clutching at the defiant craft, but this danger was quickly forgotten, for ahead loomed the towering waves.

With a song crying from its sail, with vigor to match that of the young chiefs who manned it, the swift canoe shot into the combers, lost its nose in a great gray-blue wave, then rose triumphantly onto the crest and sped away into the very center of the wind and the rousing waves and vast blue sea of Ta'aroa.

"What a canoe" Teroro exulted, the spray whipping his black hair about his face.

It was with special exhilaration that the thirty paddlers tasted the last moments of freedom with which Teroro had provided them, for each man knew that at nightfall he would embark upon a different journey: solemn, joyless, with the constant threat of death impending. In their imagination they could see the altar where the blood would be. They could visualize the dreadful sacrificial clubs. But worse, each man knew positively that when Wait-for-the-West-Wind touched Havaiki's shore at dawn tomorrow one of today's crew would be struck down forever.

So in the day's bright sunlight, with spume about them and the sound of sea birds, they experienced momentary joy as they drove their swift canoe, champion of the islands, with the assurance that only competent men ever know. To their wishes, the canoe responded; to their efforts it leaped forward; and now as they turned it in the free and joyous ocean, it responded as they willed, exactly to the inch as they intended, and found once more the opening through the reef, and came at last to shore. How competently these island men had built and mastered their canoe; how securely it obeyed their will.

BY NIGHTFALL Wait-for-the-West-Wind had assumed a much different aspect. The upswept sterns were decorated with flowers and pennants of yellow tapa. The permanent platform which held the two hulls together was covered with polished planks. At the forward end stood an ultra-sacred grass-thatched temple, toward which a solemn procession of priests in sacerdotal attire now moved in dread silence.

The High Priest, clad in white and with a fringe of shark's teeth about his ankles, a skullcap of red feathers on his black hair, proceeded to the grass temple and paused, at which all Bora Borans, king and slave alike, fell to the ground and hid their faces, for what was about to occur was too sacred for even a king to behold.

The feather-figured statue of Oro himself, woven of sennit and with sea shells as eyes, was about to be placed inside the temple for its journey to Havaiki. From his white robes the High Priest produced a wrapping of ti leaves, which hid the god, and holding the bundle high above him he prayed in terrifying voice, then kneeled and placed

the god inside the temple. He moved back, struck the canoe with his staff and cried, "Wait-for-the-West-Wind, take thy god safely to Havaiki!" '

The prostrate crowd rose, no man speaking, and the paddlers assumed the positions they had held earlier that day. Next the seers of the island, old men of wisdom, stepped onto the polished platform wearing solemn brown tapa and skullcaps edged with dog s teeth. Some carried gourds with which to divine portents, while others studied the dying sun for auguries which they shared with no one.

Teroro, robed in yellow and wearing a warrior's helmet of feathers and shark's teeth, took his place in the prow, while the king, in precious yellow robes which covered his ankles, stood amidships. Silence resumed, and the High Priest announced that he was ready to accept the sacrifices.

Servants of Oro came forth with palm fronds which they spread in careful patterns, aft of the temple, and on these were laid strange gifts: a large fish from the lagoon, a shark caught at sea, a turtle taken on a special island, and a pig that had from birth been dedicated to Oro. These four dead sacrifices were not placed side by side, but about eighteen inches apart, and were promptly covered with additional palms.

Now, at the last moment, priests led forth the eight human sacrifices, and the people of Bora Bora, in awful silence, watched their neighbors depart for the last time. They saw the steersman who had been trapped praying to the old god Tane. And the man who had dozed in the temple. And the tardy lookout, and the sleepy young courtier. With grief the citizens watched them go. They were followed by four slaves, those unspeakable, untouchable things, known even in life as foul corpses.

As the intended victims were shoved aboard, the wife of one of the slaves, if a slave's woman could be so dignified, uttered a piercing scream. "Auwel Auwe!" she lamented, reciting that heart-tearing word of the islands that has always been reserved for moments of supreme anguish.

Her outcry was such an appalling breach of discipline, especially on the part of a slave, that all in the canoe shivered with apprehension at such an evil omen. Teroro thought: "Now our island is truly disgraced. The king will surely be sacrificed." King Tamatoa thought: "The High Priest will have a right to be outraged. My brother is doomed." The thirty paddlers thought: ."They may have to sacrifice two of us tomorrow."

The High Priest thought nothing. He was too astonished by this infraction of the tabu to do anything but point his staff at the offending woman, whereupon four priests grabbed her, rushed her to the lagoon, and pinioned her head under water. But with demonic strength the slave broke loose from their grasp, got her head free, and wailed prophetically: "Auwe! Auwe, Bora Bora!"

A priest struck her in the face with a rock, and when she stag—

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gered backward, two other priests leaped upon her and held her under the water until she died. But this did not compensate for the broken tabu, and the High Priest cried, "Whose woman was she?" Someone pointed to one of the slaves in the canoe, and the High Priest nodded slightly.

Swiftly, from the rear of the platform a burly priest, custodian of this job for many years, stepped forward and with a mighty swing of a knobbed war club crushed the skull of the unsuspecting slave. The body slumped, but before its blood could stain the canoe, it was pitched head-first into the lagoon, where the swimming priests gathered it up as a sacrifice for their local altar. Automatically, from the shore, a substitute slave was whisked aboard, and amid such disasters and ominous portents, Wait-for-the-West-Wind headed out to sea. This time, as if sharing the guilt that had settled upon the passengers, the canoe did not spring lightly toward the reef but moved reluctantly, so that by the time the stars had risen for Teroro to steer by, Wait-for-the-West-Wind had covered only a small portion of its gloomy journey to the temple of Oro on the island of Havaiki.

Toward dawn, when the constellation which astronomers in other parts of the world had long since named the Lion was rising in the east, the seers whose responsibility it was to determine such things, sagely agreed that the time was near. The High Priest was consulted, and he confirmed the fact that the red-tipped hour of dawn, sacred to Oro, was at hand. He nodded, and a huge, skck-headed drum was struck in slow rhythm, sending its cry far out to sea.