The months went by and Ruvani, the chief's granddaughter, still lived
with her friends, for she was too happy to leave them. Sometimes,
though, on bright moonlight nights, the three girls would paddle across
to the big village and gather with the rest of the village girls in
front of the chiefs house, and dance and sing and play the game called
_n'jiajia_; and then, perhaps, instead of going home across the lagoon
in the canoe, they would walk around on the inner beaches of Pingelap
and Tugulu. And long ere they came to the house they could see the faint
glimmer of the fire within, beside which Ninia the widow slept awaiting
their return.
Stealing softly in, the girls would lie down together on a soft white
mat embroidered with parrots' feathers that formed their bed, and
pulling another and larger one over them for a coverlet, they would fall
asleep, undisturbed by the loud, hoarse notes of a flock of _katafa_
(frigate birds) that every night settled on the boughs of a great _koa_
tree whose branches overhung the house.
Sometimes when the trade-winds had dropped, and the great ocean rollers
would beat heavily upon the far-off shelves of the outer reef, the
little island would seem to shake and quiver to its very foundations,
and now and then as a huge wave would curl slowly over and break with
a noise like a thunder-peal, the frigate-birds would awake from their
sleep and utter a solemn answering squawk, and the three girls nestling
closer together would whisper--
“'Tis Nanawit, the Cave-god, making another cave.”
Ere the red sun shot out from the ocean the eight dwellers on Takai
would rise from their mats; and whilst Ninia the widow would kindle
a fire of broken cocoanut shells, the two men slaves would go out and
bring back young cocoanuts and taro from the plantation on Tugulu, and
their wives would take off their gaily-coloured grass-girdles and tie
coarse nairiris of cocoanut fibre around them instead, and with the
three girls go out to the deep pools on the reef and catch fish.
Sometimes they would surprise a turtle in one of the pools, and, diving
in after the frightened creature, would capture and bring it home in
triumph to Ninia the widow.
Such was the daily life of those who dwelt on Takai.
*****
One day, ere the dews of the night had vanished from the lofty plumes
of the cocoanut palms, there came to them a loud cry, borne across the
waters of the silent lagoon, over from the village--
“A ship! A ship!”
Now not many ships came to Pingelap--perhaps now and then some wandering
sperm-whaler, cruising lazily along toward the distant Pelew Islands,
would heave-to and send a boat ashore to trade for turtle and young
drinking cocoanuts. But it was long since any whaleship had called, and
Ninia the widow, as she looked out seawards for the ship, said to the
girls--
“'Tis not yet the season for the whaleships; four moons more and we may
see one. I know not what other ships would come here.”
By and by they saw the ship. She sailed slowly round the south point of
Pingelap and backed her foreyard, and presently a boat was lowered and
pulled ashore.
Little Tarita, clapping her hands with joy, darted into the house,
followed by Ruvani and Ninia, and casting off their wet girdles of
banana fibre--for they had just come in from fishing--they dressed
themselves in their pretty _nairiris_ of coloured grasses, and put on
head-dresses of green and gold parrots' feathers, with necklaces of
sweet-smelling berries around their necks, and were soon paddling across
the lagoon to see the white strangers from the ship, who had already
landed and gone up the beach and into the village.
It is nearly a mile from Takai to the village, and before the girls
reached there they heard a great clamour of angry voices, and presently
two white men dressed in white and carrying books in their hands came
hurriedly down the beach, followed by a crowd of Sralik's warriors, who
urged them along and forced them into the boat.
Then seizing the boat they shot her out into the water, and, shaking
their spears and clubs, called out--
“Go, white men, go!”
But although the native sailors who pulled the boat were trembling
with fear, the two white men did not seem frightened, and one of them,
standing up in the stern of the boat, held up his hand and called out to
the angry and excited people--
“Let me speak, I pray you!”
The natives understood him, for he spoke to them in the language spoken
by the natives of Strong's Island, which is only a few hundred miles
from Pingelap.
*****
The people parted to the right and left as Sralik, the chief, with
a loaded musket grasped in his brawny right hand, strode down to the
water's edge. Suppressed wrath shone in his eyes as he grounded his
musket on the sand and looked at the white man.
“Speak,” he said, “and then be gone.”
The white man spoke.
“Nay, spare us thy anger, O chief. I come, not here to fill thy heart
with anger, but with peace; and, to tell thee of the great God, and of
His Son Christ who hath sent me to thee.”
Sralik laughed scornfully.
“Thou liest. Long ago, did I know that some day a white-painted ship
would come to Pingelap, and that white, men would come and speak to us
of this new God and His Son who is called Christ, and would say that
this Christ had sent them, and: then would the hearts of my people be
stolen from Nanawit the Cave-god, and Tuarangi the god of the Skies,
and I, Sralik the king, would become but as a slave, for this new God of
theirs would steal the hearts of my people from me as well.”