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Updated: June 24, 2025
"I am about to take a row on the lake, Chief," I answered carelessly. "Indeed, Friend. Have we then treated you so badly that you are tired of life?" "What do you mean?" I asked. "Come out into the sunlight, Friend, and I will explain to you." I hesitated till I saw Marama lifting the heavy wooden spear he carried and remembered that I was unarmed. Then I came out.
From information which I gathered on some journeys that I made and by inquiries from the chief Marama, who had become devoted to us, I found that Orofena was quite a large place. In shape the island was circular, a broad band of territory surrounding the great lake of which I have spoken, that in its turn surrounded a smaller island from which rose the mountain top.
We collected all we had come to seek, and started homewards escorted by Marama and his people, including a number of young women who danced before us in a light array of flowers. Passing our old house, we came to the grove where the idol Oro had stood and Bastin was so nearly sacrificed.
On arriving at my observation-post, a rocky eminence on open ground, where, with Tommy at my side, I took my seat with a telescope, I was astonished to see or rather to hear a great number of the natives walking past the base of the mound towards the bush. Then I remembered that some one, Marama, I think, had informed me that there was to be a great sacrifice to Oro at dawn on that day.
The night is te po or te rui, and the moment before the sun rises marumaru ao. A hundred other words and phrases differentiate the conditions of sky and air. I learned them from Afa and Evoa and others. The moon is te marama, and the full moon vaevae.
Even this pause may have been enough to cause convulsions of the earth above; indeed, I gathered from Marama and other Orofenans that such convulsions had occurred on and around the island at what must have corresponded with that moment of the loosing of the force.
"Those corpses are very interesting, but I don't see any use in staring at them again at present. One can always do that at any time. I have missed Marama once already by being away in that cave, and I have a lot to say to him about my people; I don't want to be absent in case he should return." "To wash up the things, I suppose," said Bickley with a sniff; "or perhaps to eat the tea-leaves."
At least we used to be able to see this cone, but now, at any rate with the naked eye, we could make out nothing, except a small brown spot in the midst of the waters of the lake. "The mountain which rose up many feet in that storm which brought you to Orofena, Friend-from-the-Sea, has now sunk till only the very top of it is to be seen," said Marama solemnly.
At these horrible threats both of them uttered a kind of wail, after which, Marama asked: "And if we consent, what then, Friend-from-the-Sea?" "Then, perchance," I answered, "in some day to come we may return to you, that I may give you of my wisdom and the Great Healer may cure your sick and the Bellower may lead you through his gate, and in his kindness make you to see with his eyes."
Waving to them to be silent, I said: "Are you mad, Marama, that you should ask us to return to sojourn among people who tried to kill us, merely because the Bellower caused fire to burn an image of wood and its head to fly from its shoulders, just to show you that it had no power to hold itself together, although you call it a god?
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