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Updated: May 15, 2025
The manaia gave his hand to my mother, the other two escorted me and the English lady, and, with the poor husband trailing along behind, we walked with stately pomp across the malae to the guest house. There was not a soul in sight, and, though the children must have been bursting with interest and curiosity, not one was to be seen.
"Nay, Manka," cried Selema quickly, and taking something from her girdle she held it up to the white man; "see, here is thy gift to the lady Sa Luia. We meant to give it back to thee with all good will, for Sa Luia loves no man but this her lover Manaia, who held her up from the angry sea when her mother died.
Let us go to the beach awhile and feel the cool wind." The two women grumbled a little at being disturbed, and Selema and I rose and went out of the house. Then, once we were at a safe distance, we ran swiftly to the beach, and then onwards to where Manaia awaited us.
On state occasions the men are the cooks, and there is one dish that is only to be prepared by the manaia who has to array himself in full war paint to serve it and a grand dish it is, composed of breadfruit dumplings stewed in cocoanut cream in a wooden bowl by means of hot stones dropped in. The dumplings are served in a twist of banana leaf, and each has a stick thrust in it to eat it by.
"As I stood before her, hat in hand and with my eyes looking downward, which is proper and correct for a modest man to do when a high lady speaks to him before many people, a white man who had been sitting at the far end of the room came over to me and said some words of greeting to me. This was Franka he whom my captain said was a manaia.
The manaia and his young men came up, danced in front of us, and then, taking the poles from their attendants, laid three large turtles before us, calling out that they were a humble offering from the men of Vaiee to the great and glorious and beautiful lady of Vailima.
He is a manaia, an ulavale . Take heed of my words and have no dealings with him. "But the man Preston only laughed. He was a fool in this though he was so clever in many other things. He was a big man, broad in the shoulders with the bright eye and the merry laugh of a boy. He had been a sailor, but had wearied of the life, and so he bought land in Ponapé and became a trader.
Selema took her seat on the foremost thwart, Manaia at the stern, and I in the centre, and then we pushed off, and using canoe paddles, made for the passage through the reef out into the open sea. When the dawn broke, we were half-way across the straits which divide Savai'i from Upolu, and only two leagues away we saw the clustering houses of Tufa on the iron-bound coast.
When she came to the surface, I was still clasped tightly in her arms, and Manaia cried to her to swim to the canoe. "Nay," she cried, "but take my babe." And so Manaia took me, and my mother threw up her arms and sank and died. When my uncle heard of this, he sent a party of his people over from Manono for me, and I was taken to live with him.
Is not her lover there, a fine man nearly as handsome as I am, and big enough to make ten such rats as thee." Tamavili was mad with rage, and did not answer. There were with Manka six men all armed with rifles which loaded at the breech like that which he had given Manaia, and Manka was too great a man for even Tamavili to hurt.
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