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
28HAWAII
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
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