With a song crying from its sail, with vigor to match that of the young chiefs who manned it, the swift canoe shot into the combers, lost its nose in a great gray-blue wave, then rose triumphantly onto the crest and sped away into the very center of the wind and the rousing waves and vast blue sea of Ta’aroa.
“What a canoe!” 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 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 things, known even in life as foul corpses.
As the intended victims were shoved aboard, the wife of one of the slaves, if a slave’s woman could be so dignified, uttered a piercing scream. “Auwe! Auwe!” she lamented, reciting that heart-tearing word of the islands that has always been reserved for moments of supreme anguish.
Her outcry was such an appalling breach of discipline, especially on the part of a slave, that all in the canoe shivered with apprehension at such an evil omen. Teroro thought: “Now our island is truly disgraced. The king will surely be sacrificed.” King Tamatoa thought: “The High Priest will have a right to be outraged. My brother is doomed.” The thirty paddlers thought: “They may have to sacrifice two of us tomorrow.”
The High Priest thought nothing. He was too astonished by this infraction of the tabu to do anything but point his staff at the offending woman, whereupon four priests grabbed her, rushed her to the lagoon, and pinioned her head under water. But with demonic strength the slave broke loose from their grasp, got her head free, and wailed prophetically: “Auwe! Auwe, Bora Bora!”
A priest struck her in the face with a rock, and when she staggered backward, two other priests leaped upon her and held her under the water until she died. But this did not compensate for the broken tabu, and the High Priest cried, “Whose woman was she?” Someone pointed to one of the slaves in the canoe, and the High Priest nodded slightly.
Swiftly, from the rear of the platform a burly priest, custodian of this job for many years, stepped forward and with a mighty swing of a knobbed war club crushed the skull of the unsuspecting slave. The body slumped, but before its blood could stain the canoe, it was pitched headfirst into the lagoon, where the swimming priests gathered it up as a sacrifice for their local altar. Automatically, from the shore, a substitute slave was whisked aboard, and amid such disasters and ominous portents, Wait-for-the-West-Wind headed out to sea. This time, as if sharing the guilt that had settled upon the passengers, the canoe did not spring lightly toward the reef but moved reluctantly, so that by the time the stars had risen for Teroro to steer by, Wait-for-the-West-Wind had covered only a small portion of its gloomy journey to the temple of Oro on the island of Havaiki.
Toward dawn, when the constellation which astronomers in other parts of the world had long since named the Lion was rising in the east, the seers whose responsibility it was to determine such things, sagely agreed that the time was near. The High Priest was consulted, and he confirmed the fact that the red-tipped hour of dawn, sacred to Oro, was at hand. He nodded, and a huge, slack-headed drum was struck in slow rhythm, sending its cry far out to sea.
The rest of the world was silent. Even the lapping waves and birds who customarily cried at dawn were supposed to cease their murmuring at the approach of dread Oro. There was only the drum, until, as night paled and red streamers rose in the east, Teroro caught the sound of another drum, and then a third, far in the distance. The canoes, still invisible to one another, were beginning to assemble for the solemn procession into the channel of Havaiki. Now the drums increased their beat, until a vast throbbing was set up—hammering, hammering—and the red dawn increased, and over the silent sea one could begin to spot tall sails and mournful pennants hanging in the breezeless air. The High Priest moved his hands faster, and the drummers speeded their beat, and the paddlers began to move the canoe, always in silence, toward the gathering place, and as the red sun burst from its pit in the horizon, eleven canoes, brilliant in color and sacrificial gifts, stood forth and formed two majestic lines, each headed for the temple of Oro; but as they moved and as Teroro studied them carefully, he concluded with satisfaction: “No one has a canoe like ours.”
The drums abruptly stopped, and the High Priest began an agitated chant, into the middle of which a terrifying, inhuman sound intruded: it was the frenzied beating of a very long, small-headed drum which gave an anguished cry, and as it rose to its climax, the High Priest screamed, and the burly executione
r swung his studded club and crushed the head of the tall young courtier who had slept when he should have been awake.
Reverently, priestly attendants caught the corpse while others removed the palms that had covered the earlier sacrifices: the fish, the shark, the turtle and the pig. It now became obvious why spaces eighteen inches wide had been left between these offerings, for into the first gaping slot was carefully fitted the dead body of the courtier.
The chanting resumed and the dreadful drum began a new lament for the feckless lookout. The club fell with great fury, and the body was tenderly slipped in between the shark and the turtle. Three more times the frenzied little drum was beaten, and in the red light of dawn the awful club crashed down upon some head, so that when day commenced, the fore part of the platform was filled with Bora Bora’s diocesan statue of Oro, wrapped in ti leaves and wreathed in golden feathers, surveying the five fresh human sacrifices that lay interspersed with the fish, the shark, the turtle and the pig. Each of the other ten canoes, their wild drums wailing, had offered identical sacrifices, and all now moved the last half mile to the temple.
The travelers in Wait-for-the-West-Wind had varied thoughts as they approached the sacred landing, but on one thing all agreed: it was reasonable for a god to require special sacrifices on days of particular solemnity, and as for the customary four slaves, no one was concerned about their deaths, especially since one of their congregation had broken a tabu so shamelessly. Slaves were ordained for sacrifice.
The High Priest reasoned, in these last minutes, that considering Bora Bora’s stupid persistence in allegiance to Tane the more sacrifices made to Oro the better, particularly when one of them happened to be yesterday’s steersman, a man notoriously dedicated to Tane. “Weed them out, root and branch,” he muttered to himself. He did not consider the five men so far sacrificed an unusual number, nor did he think that the four more who were marked for sure death, nor the slave and his wife, nor the chance ones that would be killed at the convocation itself exceeded a reasonable limit. Oro was a powerful god. He had accomplished what no other god before him had attained: the consolidation of all the islands; it was only appropriate that he be honored. Prayers, respect and observance of tabus had always been accorded all gods, but a master god like Oro merited supreme sacrifices like sharks and men. Far from feeling that a quota of nine was excessive, he was already dreaming of the time when Bora Bora could invade some outward island and return with thirty or forty captives to be offered up at one sublime ceremonial. “We must impress the islands,” he mused.
King Tamatoa’s thoughts were different. To be sure, he felt no regret or responsibility for the death of his tardy lookout and his one-time courtier. They had failed, and death was customarily the penalty for failure. Nor could he lament in any way the four foul corpses; slaves were born to be sacrificed, but he was personally ashamed that one of his slaves had been so weak as to cry out merely because her man was being taken to Oro. Tamatoa looked upon a reasonable number of sacrifices as the simplest way of obtaining a steady flow of mana, but he nevertheless felt considerable uneasiness over the fact that the total of sacrifices for any given convocation had now been established as nine, plus more perhaps according to the chances of the day. Bora Bora was not a large island. Its men were numbered, and if in the past they had maintained their freedom it was because of their superior courage. The king wondered: “Is this sudden conversion to Oro a device by the wise men of Havaiki whereby they can depopulate my island and thus accomplish by guile what they have always been unable to do by battle?” He was deeply perplexed by a further haunting possibility: “Do you suppose the priests at Havaiki are teasing our High Priest along with promises of promotion only until such time as he has disposed of Teroro and me?” Then, for the first time he expressed in words his real perplexity: “It is very difficult to be king when the gods are changing.”
Teroro saw things more simply. He was outraged. His thoughts were forthright and purposeful. The death of slaves he could condone, for that was the law of the world, on every island. But to execute for trivial reasons the best fighters on Bora Bora, merely to appease a new god, was obviously wrong and disastrous. “Look at the body of Terupe, lying there between the shark and the turtle! He was the best steersman I ever had. And the High Priest knew it. And Tapoa, useless beside the shark. He was wise and would have made a good counselor.” Teroro was so furious that he did not trust himself to look either at his brother or at the High Priest, lest he uncover his thoughts. Instead, he contented himself with staring ahead at the impressive canoes and listening to the mournful drums, speaking of death. He thought: “Unless we settle the High Priest now, these drums are the requiem of Bora Bora.” He saw clearly that the death of eight or ten more key warriors would lay the island open to assault. “I’ll work out a plan,” he swore to himself.
The minor priests looked with some satisfaction upon the sacrifices already consummated and those about to occur. With the advent of Oro, each priest had faced an inner struggle: “Shall I go over to the new god, or shall I remain faithful to Tane?” It was gratifying to know that one had chosen the winner. The priests acknowledged that there remained some dissidence in the island, but they had observed that after each convocation, adherence to Tane weakened. “Sacrifices help us attract the attention of Oro,” they rationalized, “and then he sends us mana.” Their conclusions were influenced perhaps by the fact that as priests they could be reasonably sure that they would not be sacrificed to obtain mana; their role in the upcoming ceremonies was simple and known: to hoist the sacrifices into place, to eat the sacrificial roast pig, also the boiled bananas, the baked taro and the salted fish. And when the convocation ended, they had to throw the human bodies into the sacred pit. There was an exhilaration about Oro that other gods did not have, and they felt gratified that they had been among the first to join his side.
The thirty rowers had only one thought: “Will it be I?”
And the three remaining slaves had no thoughts … none, that is, that would have been remotely comprehensible to the non-slaves in the canoe; for curiously, these three men, even though each had known from birth that he was doomed, had exactly the same fears, the same sick feeling beneath their hearts, and the same unaccustomed sweat in their armpits as did the men who were not slaves. But this would never have been believed.
The palpitations of the slaves did not continue long, for on the instant that Teroro touched his canoe onto the beach of Havaiki, the burly priest flashed his brutal club and killed first one, then two, then three. Their bodies were pitched onto the runway up which the canoe was to be drawn, and soon every passenger who had come in the canoe, even the king and the High Priest, bent himself to the hallowed task of hauling the mighty craft ashore and onto a small plateau where it would be consecrated for the coming year.
At the precise moment when the canoe came to rest, the High Priest whirled in the morning sunlight and dipped his staff toward one of Teroro’s most trusted companions, and before the man could move, the awful club descended and his skull was cleft in two. His body was strung from the stern to stand guard during the ceremonial days. The surviving crewmen, aghast at the rank of the man who had been slain, tried in deepest shame to prevent the thought that rose to their hearts: “It was not I.”
The convocation was planned to last three days, during which no sound but the problems of priests should be heard. Assemblies took place in an extensive, roofless rock temple perched on a magnificent plateau overlooking the ocean across which the participating canoes had come. It was a low, sprawling edifice paved with blocks of black lava, from which even blades of grass had been swept. At one end an inner temple, thatched with palm, had been constructed, and in it reposed the ark which housed the holy of holies, the ultimate statue of Oro.
The exposure of this source-god, the essential being of Oro himself, was so solemn an undertaking that not even kings or their brothers could witness the ceremony; they were excluded during the first august
meeting when Oro was taken from his ark.
There were, however, witnesses. From each canoe the five human sacrifices had been hauled to the temple, plus five from Havaiki itself, and had been stacked in a pile for Oro’s approval. When through his highest priest Oro granted assent—the priest-as-man thinking: “It’s impressive, seeing so many bodies at once. Proves the islands are beginning to demonstrate their love for Oro”—lesser priests stepped forward and engaged in one of the convocation’s most solemn rituals.
With long bone needles, threaded with golden sennit, they pierced the left eardrum of each corpse, thrust the needle on through the dead brain, and jerked the sennit out through the right ear. Then, fashioning a long loop, they strung each of the sixty corpses onto trees surrounding the temple, and for the succeeding hours these sacrificial men were free to gaze with dead eyes upon what not even kings could witness.
Tamatoa was required to sit apart with his brother kings, absolutely silent for seven hours, for spies supervised the kings to note any who failed in just homage to Oro; but in truth this was not necessary, for the twelve kings appreciated that their divinity derived from some august ultimate source beyond themselves, and their reservoirs of mana required constant replenishment through sacrifice and prayer. The world itself, in terrified silence, now paid reverence as mana flowed into both island statues and island kings.
The temple grounds were not entirely silent, and had this fact been ascertained by spies, those who were secretly breaking the tabu would have been instantly sacrificed; but Teroro knew this, and for his hushed conversations with his twenty-nine remaining crewmen he had chosen a remote glade ringed by palms.
“Are we willing to speak with frankness?” he asked.
“What risk do we run?” a fiery young chief named Mato asked. “If we talk they will kill us. If we remain silent …” He bashed his fist into his hand. “Let’s talk.”