“THE shell-gods moan in the valley, and your shadow dances!” said Hawahee to Sestrina a few days after his midnight visit to her.

What do you mean, Hawahee?” said Sestrina as she gazed long and earnestly at her solitary companion. A strange look, as though of fright, was in his eyes. His handsome face was pallid. Sestrina took his hand. He made no sign that she risked contagion by doing so, but stood quite still. Then he placed one arm gently over her shoulder and said, “Sestra, come and see, follow me.”

Sunrise was peeping over the ocean’s horizon, bathing the illimitable miles with liquid gold; like divine thrills of soundless sound from the bugles of eternity calling rÉveillÉ over the new day’s birth, transcendent hues, rich harmonics of colour, swept, thrilled with unheard music, the infinite horizons of the sailless seas. “How beautiful breathe the gods when PelÉ’s eyes stare from the east,” whispered Sestrina as she stared from the hill-top, and like some goddess with an imaginary goblet in her outstretched hand, dipped it into the golden foams of the sunrise, and drank it with her lips and eyes!

“’Tis the great Atua’s hand painting the skyline of the new day with the colours of the old sunsets,” said Hawahee as he too turned and gazed on the ocean’s eastern skyline. Then they both turned away, and walking beneath the breadfruits, passed down the little slope that led into the deep leafy glooms of the valley.

As they approached the temple they heard the shell-organ moaning soft and low, Lydian strains and mournful monotones, some as faint as the murmurs of a sea-shell.

As they stood within a few feet of the pagan temple, Hawahee said: “Look, Sestra, art thou not beautiful as thy shadow dances?” As Hawahee spoke he pointed towards the shades of the mighty buttressed banyan that stood just to the left side of the temple.

“I can see nothing,” said Sestrina as she gazed in astonishment in the direction where Hawahee declared he saw the figure of a beautiful woman dancing—her own shadow—so he said.

Sestrina stared again. She could only see a moulting, dilapidated, large grey and red-winged parrot calmly preening its feathers as every now and again it gazed curiously at them from its high perch. Hawahee gave a startled look. He seemed to have suddenly come to his senses; for he looked round quickly and said, “’Tis only fancy, come away! come away!” He almost pulled Sestrina as he beckoned her to hasten from that spot. Slowly they both walked back, neither of them speaking one word to the other.

This incident greatly worried Sestrina. All day long she went about her domestic duties in an absent-minded way, reflecting deeply. “Perhaps his mind is ill. I remember reading in books, long years ago, that men and women become strange and have peculiar fancies—mad, I think they call the complaint. I will go and watch him. He may harm himself through his desire that afflicts him. Sooner than harm should come to him, I would—”

She would not allow her thoughts to go further, but seeing that the sun was low, a great fear suddenly possessed her—she ran down the slopes to go in search of Hawahee. Where had he been all day? she thought as she stood on the shore. Seeing no sight of him on the isle, a terrifying fright seized her heart. For the first time during the long years, a faint realisation of how she would feel were she left perfectly alone on the isle came to her. In her new terror she put forth her hands and screamed as though in appeal to the dumb, bright sky: “Hawahee! Hawahee! Where are you? Come to me, Sestra calls you!”

Inclining her head she listened eagerly, but only the faint echo of her voice answered from the palm-clad hills. As she stared about her, she suddenly observed a dark object moving in the jungle on the elevation where the lepers were buried. The joy of life returned to her. Her feet, winged with hope and fear, sped towards that small necropolis. She suddenly stopped short. Her joy had turned to fear and wonder. What was Hawahee doing? Why dig on that spot, just as he had dug when the lepers died, one by one? She stared again. Sure enough, he was busily digging a hole exactly next to the last grave which he had dug when Rohana died. The next moment she had rushed out from the shadows.

“Why are you digging? Who has died, since ’tis only we, you and I, who dwell on this world?” she cried, her voice full of anguish.

“I make my own grave, Sestra, surely I must die some day,” murmured Hawahee as he suddenly stayed his hand, and rubbed his eyes as though he had just awakened from a strange dream. Then he hung his head as though in shame that he should cause the girl such grief.

“Come back to the palavana (homestead),” said Sestrina. And Hawahee followed her like an obedient child.

Directly Hawahee entered his hut, he rubbed his eyes and remembered what a strange thing he had done. Tears were in his eyes as he thought of Sestrina’s grief. “I have brought pain to her heart, Sestra, the flower, the light of my soul, the goddess of my soul’s misery! Surely the gods of the valley have deserted me that they should make me feel that I was as one dead, for did I not go and dig my grave by the side of Rohana’s sleep, and my other comrades who dwell in Langi? ’Tis the madness of desire, the long darkness and thirst which has made me forget I still breathe the light.”

As the sad Hawaiian reflected, he drew up the sleeve of his jerkin so that he might examine the leper patch on his arm. “Aue!” he exclaimed as he gazed on his arm, astounded! “’Tis dry! and hardly to be seen! O Atua! O PelÉ! can it be that thou hast spared me? Kauhilo, blessed be thy name, and the pure fires of thy mountains.^[2] In the fires of loveliness, O Kauhilo, thou hast surely purified my body! My body is sweet as are the flowers of the forest, and warm as the sunlight afloat on the seas. My desires! My desires! they shall be a blessing and not a curse on the woman I love.”

In the deep gratitude which he felt towards his gods, his eyes filled with tears. Once again he pressed the muscles of his arms, and, sure enough, the leper patch was dry—cured! He rose to his feet. He pulled the delicately woven tappa shirt half over his shoulders, and then gazed on his full chest. The flesh was soft, full-looking, like a woman’s, the throat’s perfect curves and lines full of manly grace, and of the splendid flush of health. The physical characteristics of his race were shown to splendid advantage by his god-like figure, the symmetry, the muscular beauty of his body’s strength. As he stood there, framed in his hut’s tall doorway, his fine, clear eyes gazing on his pagan stars in gratitude, he might easily have been mistaken for some god-like figure expressing manly beauty, wondrously done in smooth-veined gold-brown marble. In his ecstasy over his discovery, Hawahee lifted his arms and prayed aloud. He thought of all that his discovery meant to him. Already the shadow of night lay over the isle. In a frenzy of delight he rushed from his homestead. Again he waved his arms to the sky.

As he lifted his hands and called to Atua, and PelÉ, and Kauhilo he looked what he was—a pagan praying to the stars.

Then he lay prone and beat his hands on the ground. Again he rose to his feet, and, rushing down the valley, knelt before the wonderful stone figures that were the great hope and pagan joy of his spiritual-dreaming life. He lifted his arms in fervent prayer to Atua, and gazed in an awestruck way up at Kauhilo’s eternal sidelong glance, and then again into great PelÉ’s face and the eyes that gave their immutable stare into the leafy shadows. Rising from his knees, he again paid obeisance to the gods of his own creating, and then rushed out into the shadows close by and prayed again!

The great grey dawn came stealing over the Pacific: Hawahee was still awake. He had only slept an hour or so. The wonder of his discovery had driven sleep from his mind. Again he leapt from his couch. Again he stood outside by his hut, in the soft light of the breaking day, and let the sunrise gleams fall like liquid flame on his muscular form.

“Atua, O PelÉ, O Kauhilo! I thank thee!” he cried aloud as he stared in delight on the perfect smoothness of his muscular flanks, his bosom and the healthful glow of his body! Hastily pulling on his tappa-robe, he ran down the slope, away once more to pray to his gods!

Such was Hawahee’s delight when he left Sestrina and found he was full of health.

In the meantime, Sestrina wept. Directly she saw Hawahee disappear in his hut she hastened away over the slopes and filled in the grave which he had dug for himself! Then she had returned in sorrow to her lonely habitation. That same night, as Hawahee prayed in the frenzy of delight over his discovery, Sestrina knelt alone in her chamber, praying to the great White God of her childhood. Then, remembering, she bowed her head and prayed to the gods of the temple.

“O Hawahee, thou art now all the world, all of life and light to me, therefore I cannot desert the gods thou prayest to,” she murmured, as she thought of the grave he had dug.

She was still awake when dawn sent a glimmer of silvery light over her couch and along the wooden walls, touching the faded faces of the past. She lay still, her eyes staring into the great sorrow of her dreams as the first gleam of sunrise touched her couch, and her ears heard the chatterings and melodious whistlings of the cockatoos and parrots. The music of the birds called her back to herself. She at once rose and swiftly attired herself in the picturesque costume which Hawahee, with such artistic toil and love, had weaved. Stealing from her chamber, she ran outside her doorway and stood like a graceful nymph in the cool morning air. Her face was strangely flushed, her eyes feverish-looking, as she gazed into the shadowy depths of the orange trees and smelt the damp of the gloom that were illuminated with flowers. Glancing around, she spied the calabash wherein Hawahee kept the fermented orange and lime juice which he so carefully made for himself. For often he, too, could not sleep.

“It brings sweetest sleep to my brain, O Sestra,” he had said.

And so the pagan girl dipped the coco-nut-shell goblet into the calabash, and filling it to the brim, drank twice! Thoughts of Hawahee and their mutual sorrow commenced to haunt her mind. “O Atua, O great PelÉ, why am I denied this man’s caress—and yet—” and as she spoke she hesitated and dropped her eyes as some old memory seemed to steal on the soft dawn’s breeze, coming to her as though from far beyond the seas. She placed her fingers into her ears as though to stay the hidden voices—for she had heard strange whisperings that night as Hawahee gazed in joy on the full grace of his graceful form and dreamed of the solitary woman who slept near him.

“Why not gaze into his eyes as I have longed to gaze in other eyes? Why not feel the lovely, strong clasp of the arms of love? Have I not secretly longed for such love—and have I not heard the hidden voices of his dreams steal to me across the moonlit yam patch? Why have the gods given me this strange desire? Am I different to the women who walk the great living world that I am separated from by those far-away skylines of the ocean and by cruel fate. O Atua, O PelÉ, do I not remember the old things of my childhood, of the longings and sweet, kind ways of the world of the past? Was I not a child once, and did not my head lay on the bosom of a mother who was beautiful in the virgin light of pure motherhood?”

And, as Sestrina reflected, she worked herself into a kind of pagan frenzy over the rebellious thoughts that began to haunt her.

“I am beautiful, O PelÉ,” she cried. She ran down the shore. Throwing her hair wildly about her shoulders she stared out to sea and began to sway and chant in a strange manner. She gazed enraptured at her image in the lagoon. “How rounded my limbs are, how full and soft. O Hawahee, how happy am I in the thought of your praise.”

She gazed on her image again and swerved, vanity ashine in her eyes, to see her mass of glittering hair rippling down the shadowy shoulders, falling below her waist as she unclothed, ready to leap into the cool lagoon’s water. Her eyes were bright with passionate thoughts. She turned about and stared on the great shining seas. She drank in the tropical loveliness of the isle as she had never done before. The crimson glory of the tropic flowers gave her a strange thrill of delight. All the spiritual beauty of the forest had vanished! She only saw the warm colours, the hot sunlight and smelt the sensuous exotic odours of the bee-sucked crimson petals of the hibiscus and flamboyant blossoms. The pagan spirit that had suddenly awakened in her soul made her clap her hands in ecstasy as she gazed up at the bright-plumaged birds that sped across the sky. The huge-trunked breadfruit trees that stood by the shore were still her wise old friends as they leaned their richly tasselled leafy arms over her, nearly to the lagoon’s sandy bank, and sighed. The next moment she had leapt from the waters and stood in their shades.

“O wise old trees of the forest, you are happy, and so why should I be sad?” she murmured as she stared at the big leafy heights and thought how Hawahee had told her that they were the reincarnations of mighty gods who had fallen in the past through having mortal desires!

She gave a silvery peal of laughter. She took forth her little bamboo flute from the folds of her rami (skirt). There beneath the sighing breadfruits, she placed the reed to her lips and piped like Pan in his leafy solitudes. Wherefrom came the sweet plaintive notes of the magical melody which she piped? Hawahee had never taught her that melody! She opened her eyes wide in wonder. She rose and ran back to the lagoon’s side, and, gazing on her knees in the water, spied the yet unhealed cut which she had received when she fell in the hollow. Throwing her head backward, she placed her arms up over her shoulders so that her head could rest on her hands as she gazed at the sky. Then with eyes half closed, she murmured dreamily: “Hawahee! Hawahee! I am but a woman!” Suddenly her hair was outblown, for a great wind swept over the seas. The next moment she had dropped her arms and was staring with startled eyes, for the winds had swept down the valley. She could hear the gods of the temple in the valley moaning deeply. “What have I been dreaming? Why have such thoughts come to me?” she cried.

Hastily, and with trembling hands, she replaced her disordered hair, rearranged her rami, and placing her hands over her eyes, hid them in shame. She ran up the shore, ran as though in fright from herself! She hastened to attend her domestic duties. In a few moments the yams and fish were cooked and placed in the platters.

“He is late this morning,” she muttered, as Hawahee made no appearance. Then she heard footsteps; it was as though Hawahee had heard her thoughts, for there he stood by the kitchen porch. Sestrina gazed on her lonely comrade in wonder. He looked very happy. The lines of sorrow had left his brow, and his eyes were full of joyous light!

“Sestra, you are late this morning; how is it? Did you not sleep well, wahine?”

Sestrina blushed deeply, and trembled inwardly in the thought that perhaps the strange man before her had read her thoughts, had heard the yearnings of her soul. “Why did he smile so wistfully and with such tenderness? Why was his face suffused with a great warmth, as though colour of the jungle-peonies had left their rosy flush on his cheeks? Why did his eyes gleam with a wondrous light as though he had scanned the heavens and sighted the angels amongst the stars? Why?”

As soon as Hawahee had breakfasted, he rose from the table and said: “Sestra, I will away to weave my mats, and shall not see you to-day.” And saying this, the Hawaiian, with his soul full of fervent joy over his deliverance from the leprosy, went into the valley to spend the day in prayer. For Hawahee was truly a holy man.

That same night, whilst Hawahee slept, Sestrina made up her mind to go off to the shell-temple and pray to the gods. Rising from her couch she hastily attired herself in the much worn tappa-robe and went to the door. She looked out into the night and glanced fearfully about her. The winds were blowing wildly, and she could hear the seas thundering as they rebounded on the outer reefs. The deep strain of superstition in her nature was intensified by the ocean’s monotone and the distant moaning harmonies of the shell-altar. She had heard those strange shell-murmurs for more than a thousand nights, till at last they chimed to her ears like voices of the infinite.

Taking advantage of the wild moaning of the palms as a gust of wind swept across the isle, she swiftly ran by Hawahee’s silent hut. In a few minutes she had reached the solitudes of the valley. Approaching the temple, a great fright seized her heart. She could hear the gods, those wonderful oracles that had been fashioned by the toil of Hawahee’s superstitious imagination, moaning loudly. In the darkness of the valley, alone with the terror of her own imagination, the big shell-mouths had spiritual voices.

For a moment she stood quite still, afraid to approach that pagan temple of the valley. A falling dead leaf touched her shoulder; she gave a startled jump and almost screamed in fright. “Why should I fear since Hawahee prays so fervently; what is the matter with me?” she thought. The next moment she had entered the portals of the temple.

In a moment she fell on her knees before the mighty oracles. With lifted hands she gazed up at PelÉ’s changeless face. Was it some wild fancy of the brain, or did PelÉ’s large, pearl-white eyes gaze on her kneeling, supplicating figure in sorrow? Yes, as the curved, wide rose-flushed shell-lips moaned a deep contralto note of sympathy.

“O goddess PelÉ, O Atua, and great Kauhilo, send the deepest oblivion to my heart, sweep the far-off past away! I would only wish to remember Hawahee, the one whose loving hands fashioned the solemn wonder of your presence.” And as Sestrina knelt and appealed to the gods, they suddenly ceased their moanings—each voice stopped; then a violent gust of wind swept through the banyan heights and Atua’s voice alone moaned a deep angry warning-note to the pagan girl’s ears. Rising to her feet in the terror of her superstition, for she imagined the gods were cursing her, she rushed from the temple. In her fright she ran up the left slope, and ran into the leafy shadows almost behind the temple. She turned to the right and passed under the shade of the banyans through which the moonlight glimmered.

She suddenly stopped, stood rigid, with hands up-raised, electrified, as though to ward off some terror—there before her, standing in the shade of the buttressed banyan, stood a figure; she stared on herself! She stood before a figure of carven coral stone, chiselled to resemble her nearly naked form, a marvellous work of heathen art, the lips, the brow, the expression perfect, even to the immovable eyelids. The massed crown of hair looked real! It was as though it had been carved with a needle. The raised skeins of slenderest stone were artistically left so that the carven ringlets should fall over the shoulders. It was a wonderful emblematical figure of love’s highest achievement in sculptural poetic art. The figure resembled the astonished girl so much, that could one have seen the two figures standing there in the moon-touched gloom, it would have been impossible to tell which knew the warm breath of life and which was the sculptured, soulless stone!

Hawahee had carved her image, made a goddess of her, so that he might kneel to her beauty, her cold loveliness, in secret! Every curve from the brow down to the perfect feet was exact. She stared again and trembled—the lips moaned! The Hawaiian fanatic had—and from what infinite selection and choice?—placed a shell in the mouth. It was a sad, sweet-linked, long-drawn note of melancholy that the shadowy mouth of the pagan girl’s stone shape gave forth.

“Hawahee! Hawahee!” she cried in the momentary sorrow that came as she realised why the sad leper had made that figure. In a flash she realised that he knelt before that deaf, eyeless resemblance of her body so that he could appeal in secret to the woman he loved, could kneel in some half-divine passion without contaminating her own sad reality!

Only for a moment did she stand there staring in astonishment, face to face with the beautiful immobility of her stone self. The next moment she had turned aside, had fled in her terror.

Down the valley’s side she ran. When she arrived outside her dwelling she was gasping for breath. She looked over her shoulder fearfully, then ran inside her lonely chamber, for she could hear the loud moanings of the gods and fancied they were racing in hatred after her!

No sleep for Sestrina that night! Her brain teemed with wild fancies as she lay on her couch thinking, thinking. The wonder of the figure she had seen behind the temple haunted her soul. For the first time for years she felt the terror of her own loneliness, in the dark, alone in that tiny dwelling, on an isle set in the boundless solitudes of the Pacific Ocean. As the first weird atmosphere, through seeing that shape, began to wear off, she rose from her couch, sat up.

“He shall not know that I have discovered it!” she murmured, as thrilling waves of strange indignation, of passion, and of sorrow for the Hawaiian came to her. She hardly knew what to think of it all. Then the curiosity of the feminine nature asserted itself. “I will watch him! I will see the meaning of it all!” And in this sudden resolution, she lay her head on the pillow again and fell asleep.

Dawn swept over the Pacific seas, bringing the splendour of the tropic day in its train. Sestrina was up with the birds. She saw the first etherealised impression of the sunrise come, as the great artist, Eternity, held the brush of Time in his unerring hand and swept the ocean skyline with a daub of liquid gold. Sestrina saw that daub twinkle like lightning as it ran in its splendid overflow and trickled across the tremendous dark heaving canvas—the Pacific Ocean.

Once more she carefully turned the cooking yams, then she turned her head—Hawahee stood before her.

“Sestra, I have been sleepless the last two nights,” he said, as the castaway woman remarked on his early appearance.

Then Sestrina turned her eyes from his face, for she did not wish him to see the curious wonder that she knew must be visible in her eyes. It was then that Hawahee said: “Sestra, dear wahine, I have gathered no sea-birds’ eggs at all the last two mornings, but have wandered by the shore, watching the dawn and the morning’s gold steal over wide waters and brush all the lagoons with soft fire.”

As Hawahee said this, Sestrina looked swiftly into his eyes. Why did his lips smile so tenderly and yet in so knowing a manner? She suddenly remembered how she had the morning before gazed on her image in the lagoon, had danced to her shadow and chanted! She blushed hotly at the thought that Hawahee had been on the shore side instead of far away seeking the morning seagulls’ eggs, and had spied on her during her strange madness. Hiding her face in her hands, she said: “I hate you!”

Hawahee, who had seen and heard so much, only smiled. “Why this shame, Sestra?” he said as he gazed at her. Sestrina was still trembling in her confusion. Then he continued: “’Tis true that I saw you; do you deny me the brief happiness that the Fates inspired you to give unto my soul at the breaking of the day?”

At hearing these words, and the tender note of Hawahee’s melancholy voice, Sestrina’s shame vanished. She half smiled to herself as she looked up at the tall, dignified man before her and thought of her stone shape behind the temple. And Hawahee smiled too, and was pleased that she should take it all in such good part, for he little knew what she knew!