Hawaii - James Michener [17]
From various grass houses along the lagoon, men appeared, drowsily wrapping themselves in tapa and swallowing the last bits of coconut. "Send for the priests to bless our canoe," Teroro called, and soon four holy men arrived, pleasure on their faces, for among all the functions of this island, there was nothing that exceeded in common joy the returning of the ceremonial canoe to its natural element. Palm fronds that had enclosed the seaward end of the long shed were taken down, and the twin hulls of the immense canoe were edged carefully toward the water. Then a rare old priest named Tupuna, his long white hair piled on his head and stuck with skewers, separated his beard, and with his eyes on the lagoon and on the open sea beyond, cried:
"Ta'aroa, god of the dark and sweeping sea,
Ta'aroa, master of tempest and gentle calm,
Ta'aroa, protector of men with vision of the reef,
Ta'aroa, take Wair-for-the-West-Wind to thy bosom,
Take it to Havaiki and to Moorea and to Nuku Hiva,
To the Black Shining Road of Ta'aroa,
To the Black Shining Road of Tane,
To the Road of the Spider,
To the Much-traveled Road of Ta'aroa.
God of the dark and sweeping sea,
Accept as thy gift, this canoe."
In silence and in spiritual exaltation, Teroro pulled away the last prop that bound his glorious canoe to land, and slowly it began to taste the lagoon, to dip its high-tiered stern into the gentle waves, and finally to ride upon the bosom of Ta'aroa, which was its home.
The young chiefs who would paddle the canoe that night now leaped into the two hulls and adjusted the movable seats that slid back and forth along the dugout sections. Teroro, grabbing his personal god-carved paddle, gave the canoe a mighty shove that sent it far into the lagoon, with him trailing his feet aft in the green waters. "Hoist sail!” he cried. "We'll test the wind." And when a noonday breeze dropped down from the cliff, it caught the sail and began to move the great double-hulled canoe, and men paddled briskly, and soon with lightning speed Wait-for-the-West-Wind hurtled across its home lagoon.
It flew like a special albatross, just dipping into the waves. It went like the wind-caught leaf of a breadfruit tree, skimming the waters. It went like a young woman hurrying to meet her lover, like the essence of the god Ta'aroa majestically inspecting the ramparts of his ocean. It sped like the spirit of a warrior killed in battle, on its swift journey to the everlasting halls of Tane. And it flashed across the lagoon like what it was: a miraculous, slim, double-hulled craft of Bora Bora, the swiftest ship the world at that time had ever known, capable of doing thirty knots in bursts, ten knots for days at a time, hour after hour; a huge, massive craft seventy-nine feet long, with a tiered stern twenty-two feet high and a solid platform slung across the hulls on which forty men or the statues of forty gods could ride, with pigs and pandanus and water stowed safely in the hidden innards.
"Wait for the west wind," the men who built the canoe had advised, "for it blows strong and sure from the heart of the hurricane." The north wind cannot be depended upon, and the east wind is no treasure, for it blows constantly, and the south wind brings nothing but irritating minor storms, never those that shake the earth, not storms that last for weeks at a time and which can be counted upon to drive a canoe to the farthest points of earth. Wait for the west wind! It blows from the heart of the hurricane. It is a wind to match this great canoe.
On this day, it was an ordinary eastern wind. Some of the world's sailors might even have counted it a considerable