OF THE SOUTH SEAS 421 



taken their carts for their homes, a little elated but still 

 quoting holy writ, the nymphs and a dozen other girls 

 of seething mirth took possession of the temple with a 

 score of young men, and sang their love-songs and set 

 the words to gesture and somatic harmony. Brooke 

 and I lay and mused as we listened and gazed. When 

 a youth crowned with ferns began to play a series of 

 flageolets with his nose, the poet put his foot on mine. 



"We are on Mount Parnassus," he whispered. "The 

 women in faun skins will enter in a moment, swinging 

 the thyrsus and beating the cymbals. Pan peeps from 

 behind that palm. Those are his pipes, as sure as Linus 

 went to the dogs." 



I met others of the royal family than the former queen, 

 Marao, and her daughters, the Princesses Tekau and 

 Boots, at an amnraa maa given at the mansion of Tetu- 

 anui. The preparations occupied several days, and we 

 all assisted in the hunt for the oysters, shrimp, crabs, 

 mao, and fish, going by twos and threes to the lagoon, 

 the reef, the stream, and the hills for their rarest titbits. 

 The pigs and fowl were out of the earth by the day of 

 the feast, and Haamoura and Tatini set the table, a 

 real one on legs. The veranda was elegantly decorated 

 with palms, but the table was below stairs in the cooler, 

 darker, unwalled rooms, on the black pebbles brought 

 from a far-away beach. The i^illars of the house were 

 hung with banana-leaves and ferns, but the atmosphere 

 was not vividly gay because of the high estate and age of 

 Tetuanui and his visitors. 



The company arrived in automobiles, conspicuous 

 among them Hinoe Pomare, the big hobbledehoy son of 

 Prince Hinoe, and, next to his fatlier, heir to the throne. 



