EIGHT years had passed since the winds had drifted Sestrina and the lepers into the vast solitude of that isle in the Pacific Ocean. Even on that lonely island world, Time’s flight had wrought wondrous changes.

On the elevation, just above the shore reefs by the lagoons, stood five lumps of coral stone which had been fashioned so as to resemble crosses. It was the tiny necropolis where the lepers, Lupo, Rohana, Steno and their two blind comrades lay asleep with all their mortal desires and sins in the dust under the waving palms.

The years had changed Sestrina from a slim maid into the fully developed beauty of womanhood. The hot tropical suns had tanned her body into a deeper olive hue. Clad in the carefully woven raiment of tropical tappa and silky fibres, she looked as wildly beautiful as the rich tropical loveliness of the isle itself. Deferred hope and the agony of years, all that she had suffered during her castaway life on the isle, had written the poetry of sorrow on her brow. Her full dark eyes had become mournful-looking, but shone with a deeper light than they had done in her girlhood. In all the time that had passed since she had first set foot on that desert isle, only one schooner had appeared on the horizon, bringing a great hope to her heart. The cleverly weaved red and green tappa-cloth signal-flag, made by Hawahee’s hands, and which still flew on top of the dead palm that stood out on the promontory’s edge, had streamed to the breezes, calling to the skylines—in vain! The schooner’s sails had faded away, leaving a deeper loneliness in Sestrina’s heart. She had watched it tacking, creeping along the dim blue skyline till the sails faded into the sunset’s glow, taking her dreams and passionate yearnings out to the great world that she but dimly remembered.

Time had completely metamorphosed her memory of the past. Her childhood’s knowledge of the great world of men and women had been slowly transmuted into a tiny isle set in surrounding, infinite seas, a universe of stars, a lonely tropic sun, dim horizons, and Hawahee’s melancholy eyes. Her Bible, and the books of life that she read, were the moods of the winds, the seas and changing seasons. She saw her passions blossom in the fiery crimson of the flamboyant trees, her purest thoughts in the delicate spiritual flowers of gossamer whiteness; her soul’s longing shone in the earnest stars, and her vanity in the mirroring blue lagoons. All the great wonder, terror and mystery of the unknown came to her on the voice of the winds when the ramping storms and typhoons swept those sailless seas. Nature’s multitudinous twinings, leafy arms of green and dark-branched broodings, made the grand Æolian harp that played to the wind’s shifting fingers, filling her soul with religious fervour. The stars shining by night through those sombre boughs were, to her, the glittering thoughts of the mighty dark-branched brain of some heathen god. But dawn brought the eternal rose of beauty in the radiant birth of the sunrise as she sat on the shore reefs, piping on her flute while the flowers danced and the birds sang those long, long thoughts that floated in the haunting mists of her mind. Her sorrow, all the anguish and tears of years, had imparadised the skyline of her memory, shining like an everlasting rainbow by virtue of the sunlight of her days of pale resignation.

Sestrina had become a pagan! Yet—though her life had been slowly transmuted into a conscious dreaming of the vast mystery of the universe—she was still full of sweetness and light as she went about her domestic duties. As she stood by the shore palms, she glanced with satisfaction down at the heap of shellfish in her hand-woven basket. Then she walked up the soft silvery sands till she came to her homestead, a thatched hut which stood in the shades of the valley’s high breadfruit trees and palms.

“Sestra!” said a man’s voice as she lifted a calabash and poured water into the big shell-pot wherein she had placed the fish, and which was hanging over the small domestic hearth-fire.

It was Hawahee who spoke. The hand of time had also toiled on his brow, leaving faint lines and all the poetry of grief which ennobles the human countenance. Through living on fresh shellfish, and through constant bathings in the ocean that encircled his home, he had stayed the ravages of the terrible scourge with which he was afflicted. He was still young and handsome.

“Is the fish cooked, Sestra?”

“Yes, and I have cooked the yams and taro,” replied Sestrina.

She brushed her mass of shining tresses aside, and gazing in the Hawaiian’s face, swiftly dropped her eyes again.

For years they had dwelt in the solitude of that place as comrades, and only yesterday, for the first time, Hawahee had looked steadily at her and said: “Sestra, you are beautiful to gaze upon, the light of the stars still lingers in your eyes long after the dawn has come.”

He had often spoken to Sestrina in the semi-poetic style which is the fascinating characteristic of Hawaiian speech, but never before had Sestrina seen him look at her so. Her heart did not resent the tender meaning of that look. She, too, had felt the great heart-loneliness and the desire which comes to women when they feel the tiny fingers of unborn children twining about the bosom of their dreams.

“The gods and goddesses have been good to us, Sestra.”

“Indeed they have, O Hawahee,” replied Sestrina in those sweet sombre tones that had become habitual to her through years of isolated companionship with the Hawaiian chief.

Throwing a small piece of wood on the kitchen fire, where the cooking fish fizzled and splattered, Hawahee continued: “Ah, wahine, though you so often dream of one you love, and have brought tears to my eyes over your sorrow, remember that I am a lonely man, dwelling in lonelier sorrow. And, I say, that though I have promised the gods to quench the fire of mortal desire, I know ’tis no wish of the gods Kauhilo, Atua or merciful PelÉ, that I should not gaze on the loveliness of woman.”

“How know you that I dream of others than PelÉ, Kauhilo and Atua?” said Sestrina, as she gazed in wonder on the man who could read her secret dreams.

“Can I help the magic light that brightens my soul, this gift of the gods which enables me to see your innermost dreams? Can I stay the reflected light of thy beauty from stealing over my soul, or the pain and anguish of my quenched desires, O wahine?”

Sestrina listened with bowed head, and blushed deeply. She well knew the sorrow of the man’s thoughts; and was not vanity a part of her birthright? Only that morning had she stared on her image in the lagoon and sighed as her wind-blown tresses rippled over the graceful beauty of her form and about her faultless face.

Seeing Sestrina’s downcast eyes the Hawaiian sighed and said: “Wahine, sister mine, feel not unkindly towards me; I am thy friend. Long ago I would have died, but for the thought of your loneliness should I, too, sleep on in the grave under the palms.”

Sestrina heard the deep note of sorrow in Hawahee’s voice, and wiped her eyes, for up to that day he had always spoken as a dear brother to her.

And a strange thing had happened the night before as she dreamed in her chamber and heard the starlit waves wailing on the beach below. For, had she not leapt from her couch in wonder when she saw Hawahee asleep and dreaming as he held her shadowy form in his arms—though he was in his own hut under the breadfruits by the slopes of the valley, two hundred yards away!

Hawahee was unaware that Sestrina also had suddenly become endowed with the magic-flash which enabled him to read the deep dreams of the solitary woman who stood before him.

Taking a crumpled flower from the folds of her hair, Sestrina placed it tenderly against her lips and then handed it to Hawahee.

“Aloah, beloved, Mikai!” had replied the Hawaiian castaway as he took the gift and sadly smiled. For he had spent many long twilight hours in the island’s solitude telling Sestrina the poetic customs of his people. And one custom was, that the Hawaiian maids gave crumpled flowers that had adorned their hair in sleep to the one whom their hearts secretly sorrowed over.

“’Tis sweet to feel the light and warmth of the living day, therefore I am thankful for the gifts of the gods of the heiaus (sacred temples).”

Then they sat down opposite each other and ate their breakfast in silence. The blue tropic day had risen in all the virgin splendour of its new birth, and was scattering golden sunlight through the sheltering palms as they sat there.

“Sestra! Sestra!” chuckled old Rohana. Then the aged, grey-striped, blue-winged cockatoo stared sideways from its perch at Hawahee, who was solemnly munching away, and croaked, “O Atua! O PelÉ!”

“Be quiet, Rohana!” said Sestrina as she gazed fondly at the wise-looking cockatoo which they had tamed and made their close companion, calling it Rohana since its eyes so strangely reminded them of the dead leper.

“The winds blow steadily from the sunrise, wahine, and so the heiaus (temples) music moans for us,” said Hawahee in a solemn voice. As he rose from his squatting mat, Sestrina also rose, and, inclining her form, she listened to the musical murmurs that floated from the temple.

“Let us go and give thanks to the gods ere the sun is high,” said Hawahee as he brushed the crumbs from his tappa-robe that so admirably suited his tall, handsome figure. Then they both went away down the slope that led into the lovely valley of breadfruits. Sestrina, with bowed head, followed close behind her masterful, but kind, companion.

In a few moments they stood before the wonderful temple which Hawahee had fashioned after infinite toil during the long lonely years. The temple had been made out of the natural structure of the big cavern and its high rocky walls in the valley’s side. The dimly lit, hollow chamber was about fifteen feet high, and the altar side was composed of wonderfully arranged shells of multitudinous shapes and sizes, all having been placed in rows and spiral columns that rose to the roofless edifice, for the sun by day and the stars at night were the sacred lights that shone through the branched heights of that temple’s roof. These shells, many of enormous dimensions, had been arranged with delicate care in such a way, that when the winds blew from the south-east, and came sweeping down the valley, they blew into the pearly convolutions of each shell, which responded with a musical murmur. It was not a disordered, unharmonious sound which the shells gave forth when the sea winds blew, but a perfect, harmonious, plaintive chant-like chime. And it was this weird, mournful chime which came to Hawahee’s and Sestrina’s ears as they crept under the tall breadfruit trees, so that they might kneel in prayer before the altar of the shell-gods!

It was a grand, masterly fashioned work, a temple of the highest art attainable by mortal man. With the infinite patience of religious fervour, and a deep insight and belief in the divine omnipotence of his pagan gods, Hawahee had scraped and cut, through years of toil, three of the larger shells till they resembled the faces of the goddess PelÉ and the gods Kauhilo and Atua. With no other tool than a broken ship’s clasp-knife, which he had found on the Belle Isle, Hawahee had slowly cut holes and chiselled perfect brows, leaving the wide pearly convolution of each shell’s entrance for a mouth. The broad shoulders, bust and limbs of giant proportions had been cut from boulders of coral stone, each limb being fixed by indistinguishable joints of red clay. The whole was a wondrous work of art. Each shell-face and boulder had been exalted from insensate stone into an object of marvellous allegorical, sombre, awesome beauty. The pearl flush of the lips and the wrinkled brows expressed, in sculptural silence, something of the terror and majesty of the unknown powers of the universe! For, Hawahee had achieved the highest artistic result: through infinite toil he had managed to imbue, endow each form with god-like attributes. And lo, each face was an exact representation of the wonderful picture which his poetic imagination, his inward vision shaped when he knelt in religious fervour to the starlit dark and his pagan gods. But, withal, there was something more than chiselled, symbolical beauty in Hawahee’s sculptural work. This humble castaway child of Art who created his own deities, had endowed their lips with the grand orchestral harmony of the ocean’s cry in a thousand thousand caverns: for when the winds blew, each wonderful shell-mouth of the gods and goddess moaned a deep bass note which was in perfect harmony with the shrill murmurings and musical clamour of the wonderful altar’s smaller shells!

The goddess PelÉ, who stood in the centre—Kauhilo on the right and Atua on the left side—was seven feet in height and possessed four arms, the extreme right arm being outstretched, the perfect tapering fingers gripping the yellowish, ivory idol that had been the symbol of the dead Chinaman’s religion. Kauhilo, who gazed with an eternal sidelong glance from his brilliant stone eyes at PelÉ, had a human skull poised on his right shoulder. Atua had four arms, three outstretched and one inclined in marvellous sculptural beauty as it rested on PelÉ’s shoulder, while the pearl-white eyes gazed with immutable grief into the leafy shadows of the banyan beyond the altar’s portals. Incredible as it may seem, Hawahee had with infinite patience and genius constructed a marvellous Æolian organ of shells, whereon the winds not only played a cunning, sweet-murmuring cadence, but rendered a sombre, beautiful Hawaiian hymn. Some of the shells weighed a hundredweight; and glittering in the sunlight that shone down through the palms over the temple, they looked like mysterious pipes of some cathedral organ of nature’s construction, rows upon rows of small shells gradually increasing to larger rosy shells, each row arranged so that it gave forth the required note when the winds swept down the valley.

The first idea that had inspired Hawahee to make this wonderful instrument, came from his memory of the great Atua priests of his native isles. These priests would artfully place large empty shells on the shores by the tribal villages so that when the storms blew, the shells moaned to the listening, superstitious chiefs hidden up the shores. So did the priests invest their persons with a mighty significance and prove to the chiefs that they were the chosen of Atua, Tangalora, PelÉ and Kauhilo.

It had taken years to select the one shell from thousands that would, when placed just so, give forth the exact note required. Sestrina had helped Hawahee in the building of this wonderful temple and altar. She, too, had roamed round the shores of that lonely Pacific isle gathering thousands and thousands of seashells, and had shared Hawahee’s enthusiasm as one by one the perfect shell was discovered. Under the influence of the Hawaiian’s fanaticism, Sestrina had developed deep faith in the virtue of the shell’s Lydian strains. “The great White God, and the older gods, will know the love I have given to this work, and will hear the winds of heaven singing sweetly to their ears,” said Hawahee.

Sestrina had gazed in wonder as the handsome, dignified fanatic toiled through the years over his marvellous work of love. And so, she too had developed a reverence for the stars and the voice of that mighty lyrist—the wind of heaven—and had felt the deep soul-thrilling thoughts that come to those who kneel before the materialised shapes of their imagination, those objects which faintly represent the solemnity of their innermost faith.

When Hawahee and Sestrina entered the temple, they at once knelt before Atua, PelÉ and Kauhilo. Then, as the winds swept along the valley and the goddess PelÉ’s tongueless shell-lips moaned a rich Lydian note to the deeper mouths of the gods, they too lifted their voices and took part in that wondrous choir.

Sestrina trembled. For the first time for years she found her thoughts straying from the solemnity of the occasion. And why? She distinctly heard Hawahee extemporising unusual words—words of his own language, words that appealed with fervour to the gods to help him stay the desire of the body.

When they once more rose to their feet and stole forth into the broad light of the tropic day, Sestrina’s head was bowed, and many conflicting thoughts haunted her mind. As they left those sacred portals, the whole isle, the seas, the universe itself, hymned forth an echo of the deep-voiced anthem which they had just heard. The choruses of the feathered lyrists of the trees were pregnant with meaning. As Hawahee’s majestic form stalked along, Sestrina stayed her running feet. With finger to her lips she stood listening to the music of the palm groves: for, as they moaned to her ears, she half fancied that phantom sea-caves existed somewhere up in their green, foamy heights. Crimson-winged lories and sulphur-crested cockatoos wheeled over her head as she once more hurried after Hawahee. She stared up at the sky, and as the flocks of birds whirled away, they looked like clusters of wind-blown leaves of many hues glittering in the sunlight—as though the tropical flowers of that island world had taken wing!

“The gods are happy this day,” said Hawahee as he, too, loitered, and Sestrina gazed shoreward with enraptured eyes. She had come to love the poetry of the distant seas and all the brooding loveliness of nature’s handiwork around her. Day by day she had stood upon those little shores watching the infinite expanse of ocean as the tiny waves of the calm seas crept up to her feet. Those waves seemed her children: with strange delight she watched them run up the shore to her feet, and with sorrow saw them toss their foamy heads, as though in despair, ere they crept back to the homeless deep again. And again, at night she would stand on the shore by the dark ocean and the imaged stars, staring with such reverence as one might feel when kneeling in prayer in some mighty cathedral. She had inherited the imagination and superstition of her fanatic father in diviner tone. Consequently she had been easily influenced by the grandeur of Hawahee’s solemn faith.

Even as they reached the heights by the valley she bowed her head in reverence as the winds swept inland and the murmuring music of the shells was wafted to her ears.

“Sestra, the music is deep-voiced to-day, and so ‘twill be well to visit our brothers,” said Hawahee.

Saying this, he and Sestrina turned their footsteps and walked up to the palm-sheltered spot where Lupo, Steno, Rohana and the rest lay buried.

Each one of the lepers had died with Hawahee’s blessing to soothe their souls. For when they were at last stricken deep by the ravages of the terrible scourge, they had crept up to Hawahee’s and Sestrina’s dwellings and begged forgiveness—forgiveness which had at once been given. Lupo had been the first to go. He had stood on the shore wringing his hands as the clear light of death and the infinite came to his soul in place of the dark of his stricken, blind eyes. Sestrina had at once run down the shore, and had whispered soothing words into his ears, telling him there was nothing to forgive, that she was his dear, erring sister. And when the dying man had turned his face first to the dim horizon and then to the right and left, ere he located Sestrina, he had fallen on his knees and wept like a child. Sestrina’s kind words and wishes for his soul had greatly comforted him as he knelt upon the shore wrapped in the shroud of death, ready for his soul’s last hurry to the stars. Rohana, the last to go, had shaken his fist at the sky and cursed the gods!—ere he fell a huddled heap on the sands. Steno and his two blind comrades had moaned awhile, and had then fallen asleep like children with tired heads. And so, Hawahee and Sestrina’s heart felt sad enough as they knelt by the graves of their dead comrades and prayed. Then they quickly passed back by the reefs on their way home and parted, each going to their self-allotted tasks—Sestrina to her domestic duties and Hawahee to his mat-weaving.

As soon as she had finished her day’s toil, she went down to the beach, and jumping in her canoe paddled out beyond the reefs. Hawahee had made that small craft. His delight had ever been to do all in his power to make the castaway girl as happy as possible.

As Sestrina paddled along, she turned the small prow shoreward again, and hugged the reefs. Then she stopped, and placing her paddle in the canoe took her flute from the folds of her robe and started to play the weird sweet melodies which Hawahee had taught her. Her eyes brightened as she played on, for the winds in the palms that sheltered the blue lagoons sighed a deep effective accompaniment to her sylvan music. The light of reality faded, and her mind became wrapped in a robe of mystery. She became one with the sea, the winds and the tropical loveliness around her. Her unerring clock, the travelling sun, had already stooped to set its golden seal on the brow of the departing day. She ceased to pipe her songs as she looked seaward and watched the melancholy eyes of day on the western sea horizon, touching the ocean with ineffable splendour ere departing into the sleeping lake of all the years since the birth of Time. She came near to tears as she watched the first shadows fall and saw the great flocks of birds come speeding through the distant horizon. On, on they came in their migrating flight, looking like fleets of swiftly paddled sky-canoes. She looked up and saw their curling wings hasten over the isle, and could hear their faint dismal mutterings ere they faded to the southward, leaving a deeper loneliness behind. It was such sights that awakened the pagan mystery of her soul and made her a natural child of the universe. Even as she watched the birds fade away, she recommenced her flute-playing and paddled close to the shores to seek mysterious company. For Hawahee had told her many strange legends, and one said: “The souls of the dead Hawaiian men and women live in the shapes of birds and sing tender melodies for the ears of those they loved when in mortal shape, and wail in bitterness to the ears of those who wronged them when they roamed as mortals on the earth.”

And so, as Sestrina laid her paddle in her canoe and piped her flute, and heard the soft, Lydian music of the wind amongst the leaves, and mutterings of cockatoos, she fancied the dead lepers spoke to her. Then, as the shadows deepened to the westward, she saw shadowy tresses toss as the winds stirred the dark-fingered palm leaves, revealing to her watching eyes, visionary faces of beautiful women who gazed in silent sorrow upon her. Where had she seen those faces before?—dim, remembered faces of those who had watched over her in her childhood. Ere the stars came over the seas, she swiftly paddled to the shore.

“I’m feeling strangely sad to-night. What has happened to me that I should fear the wrath of Atua, Kauhilo and kind PelÉ?” she murmured, as she lay down on her soft couch for the night.

Then she heard Rohana shout, “Atua Hawee! Hawaee! O PelÉ!” and knew that Hawahee was placing ripe corn into the cockatoo’s cage ere he retired to bed in his homestead just across the slope.

“I am safe, for he sleeps!” she whispered, as though in fright, to herself. Then she crept from her couch, and kneeling by the old photograph of PÈre Chaco, that hung on the wooden wall, she forgot the shell-gods and prayed feverently to the great, merciful God of her childhood.