NOT many years ago, a strangely rigged, rakish-looking brigantine hugged the shore of a lonely isle of the remote South Pacific Ocean. The skipper had sighted a ragged distress signal flag flying from the top of a dead palm tree close to the shore.

“Manana!” exclaimed the half-caste, sun-tanned boatswain as the yellow-skinned, mixed crew of Spanish-Mexicans, Yaquis, and Yucatan sailors walked up the shore and stumbled across the old kitchen.

They held their strange, red-striped tasselled caps reverentially in their hands as they gazed on the rotting mats and calabashes, the mouldy remnants of an artistically weaved tappa-skirt and torn bodice that lay by the little bunk bed in a hut just by. On a small post’s crosswise placed rod swung a tiny bunch of feathers and bone, swinging to and fro to the sea winds, like some sad relic of Hope’s once radiant wings—it was Rohana, still chained to his perch! Then the wild-looking sailormen strode down the incline.

“Sapristi!” cried one of those tawny, sunburnt men from the seas in a startled voice.

The huddled crew stood just within the portals of the pagan cathedral-cavern, gazing on the wondrous fashioned moaning shell-organ and on the three giant, clay figures: Atua, with four arms, stood on the left, the extreme right arm still faithfully reclining on PelÉ’s left shoulder; Kauhilo, with the human skull on his shoulder, stood on the right of the goddess, whose uncrumbling hand of the extreme right arm still gripped the ivory idol. Their sombre faces were overgrown with hirsute-like moss, the ears sprouting delicate hair-fern; but the big curved-lipped mouths were smooth and perfect. It seemed as though Time’s hand had, in some melancholy sympathy, toiled on after Hawahee. For, as they stood there in the sombre solitude of that cavern’s aisles, mysteriously expressing in wondrous carven beauty the grandeur of paganism and soulful belief in a merciful omnipotence, they looked more god-like than ever!

“Quien sabe?” said one of the crew as they stood staring at each other.

“Dell ’anima!” exclaimed another in an awestruck voice, as two of the sailors walked into the shadows by the altar cavern and found themselves before a wonderfully carven figure of a woman!

The exquisitely chiselled face was strangely untouched by the hand of time. The wide-open eyelids still mystically expressed the old half-divine sensuous charm that had fed the hungry, noble soul of a long dead pagan. It was Sestrina’s shape, Hawahee’s faith, hope, art and love of woman, expressed in stone. A tiny blue-winged bird fluttered from the hollow of the figure’s bosom; it had built its nest within. There, under the bosom’s polished fullness, nestled four red-specked eggs, nestling in the silent eternity that was to awaken and thrill to-morrow’s leafy boughs with music.

As the astounded, red-shirted sailormen crept down the shore sands, going back to their boat, they glanced swiftly over their shoulders, half in fright—they could hear the calling deep bass moans of the deserted gods. Just as time enriches the music of a violin, age had mellowed the voices of the gods till they gave forth sounds that echoed as though from eternity. Even that rough, piratical-looking crew of the brigantine Cruz were affected as they heard the wailful, soulful music of the stone figure, of the lovely shaped sculptured woman crying in the isle’s solitude, as though she would tell their ears that sorrow is the soul of infinity. Those wondering sailormen could still hear her voice calling as they stood on deck, and the melancholy sounds came drifting across the lagoons and out over the calm, deep-moving waters of the tropic sea. They stared in each other’s eyes in wonder. The skipper opened his bearded mouth and yelled a great oath. Then the yellowish canvas sails, bellying to the night winds, sighed sorrowfully as they faded away, flying south-west under the stars of the Pacific.