The oldest member of the new-comers was attractive-looking. Her eyes were large and very bright. Her crown of hair had a marvellous glitter about it and fell in soft ripples down to her shoulders. In another moment she had rushed up to me and had prostrated herself at my feet! A tremendous yell from the onlookers followed this act of the girl’s. It appeared that her act had made me “taboo”—a sacred personage. I felt bewildered over it all. An uncomfortable idea got into my head that I was the chosen for some heathen sacrifice! I know that I must have visibly paled. I even appreciated the caresses and wailing lamentations that the goddess-maid (for such she was) made as she poured strange phrases into my ears, telling me, doubtless, of my beauty! I do confess here that her eyes told more than her lips (for I could not understand the language in which she flattered me), and I could not fail to understand the meaning conveyed.
Loud acclamations of approval followed all that the girl did. It was some little time ere I discovered how I was supposed to show my reciprocation of the dubious elevation that her choice had conferred upon me. The fact was that she was the head sacred-maid, and, instead of choosing a youth of her own race, had chosen me; therefore I found myself suddenly elevated to priesthood. The order of priesthood was not so bad, but I discovered that I was supposed to embrace and kiss the lips of the monstrous wooden idol that stood on the _pae-pae_ in front of me. Its big, wooden, grinning, one-toothed mouth and goggling glass eyes seemed to say in some malevolent voice of silence: “Come on, thou dog of a Christian, kiss this heathenish mouth, bow the knee to me, thou destroyer of heathen creeds and mighty wooden images!”
I felt helpless. I gazed in despair on the front rows of that grim, dusky-hued audience of mop-headed men! They had thrust their chins and clubs forward on seeing my obvious hesitation to worship that wooden thing. An ominous silence dwelt over all. Two fierce old hags put forth their scraggy hands and made as though to clutch at me, but, warned by a look from the goddess-maid who had brought me to that pass, they lifted their chins and spat at me! And still I hesitated. I would die sooner than kneel before that grinning wooden deity. By now the audience was loudly shouting, their headdress of big red feathers violently shaking, and still I pretended not to understand what they wished me to do. But it was hopeless, for they kept shouting and pointing to the maid and then at the idol. There stood that wooden thing, mocking me with its hideous carven grin. Not even though it meant death for me, would I violate my inherent dignity by embracing that monstrous image.