“four eyes,” that is, including my spectacles,
a convenience with which they had hitherto been unacquainted.
It was undeniable that a prophecy written by a person
not accustomed to the resources of civilization, could
not more accurately have described me and my appearance.
But the “ship without sails” was still
lacking to the completion of what had been foretold,
as the chief seemed to indicate by waving his hand
towards the sea. For the present, therefore,
they might hope that the worst would not come to the
worst. Probably this conclusion brought a ray
of hope into the melancholy face of the chief, and
the old priest himself left off trembling. They
even smiled, and, in their conversation, which assumed
a lighter tone, I caught and recorded in pencil on
my shirt-cuff, for future explanation, words which
sounded like aiskistos aneer, farmakos, catharma,
and Thargeelyah. {25} Finally the aged priest hobbled
back into his temple, and the chief, beckoning me
to follow, passed within the courtyard of his house.
The chief leading the way, I followed through the
open entrance of the courtyard. The yard was
very spacious, and under the dark shade of the trees
I could see a light here and there in the windows of
small huts along the walls, where, as I found later,
the slaves and the young men of the family slept.
In the middle of the space there was another altar,
I am sorry to say; indeed, there were altars everywhere.
I never heard of a people so religious, in their
own darkened way, as these islanders. At the
further end of the court was a really large and even
stately house, with no windows but a clerestory, indicated
by the line of light from within, flickering between
the top of the wall and the beginning of the high-pitched
roof. Light was also streaming through the wide
doorway, from which came the sound of many voices.
The house was obviously full of people, and, just
before we reached the deep verandah, a roofed space
open to the air in front, they began to come out, some
of them singing. They had flowers in their hair,
and torches in their hands. The chief, giving
me a sign to be silent, drew me apart within the shadow
of a plane tree, and we waited there till the crowd
dispersed, and went, I presume, to their own houses.
There were no women among them, and the men carried
no spears nor other weapons. When the court was
empty, we walked up the broad stone steps and stood
within the doorway. I was certainly much surprised
at what I saw. There was a rude magnificence
about this house such as I had never expected to find
in the South Sea Islands. Nay, though I am not
unacquainted with the abodes of opulence at home, and
have been a favoured guest of some of our merchant
princes (including Messrs. Bunton, the eminent haberdashers,
whose light is so generously bestowed on our Connection),
I admit that I had never looked on a more spacious
reception-room, furnished, of course, in a somewhat
savage manner, but, obviously, regardless of expense.
The very threshold between the court and the reception-room,
to which you descended by steps, was made of some
dark metal, inlaid curiously with figures of beasts
and birds, also in metal (gold, as I afterwards learned),
of various shades of colour and brightness.
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