Hawaii - James Michener [31]
"I belong to Bora Bora," Teroro said with passionate conviction. "I will never leave that island," and he started for the canoe, but pleading Tehani caught him by the legs, and he stayed with her that second night, so that on the next morning when the conch shells told of departure, he was reluctant to go. "There are no women like you on Bora Bora," he confessed. "Stay here with me," she pleaded.
At this moment he was almost tempted into confiding to her the revenge he had been formulating in his mind, but he fought back ; the impulse and said, "If I ever did come back to Havaiki, you would be my woman. A man could enjoy you."
"Come soon, Teroro, for Bora Bora is doomed."
Certainly, when the eleven visiting canoes departed the temple and stood out to sea, each breaking off from the column for its own destination, it seemed that the days of Bora Bora's greatness had vanished, for it was a dispirited group that occupied Wait-for-the-West-Wind. King Tamatoa acknowledged that in the game of power at the temple, he had permanently lost. All strength now lay with the High Priest, and abandonment of the island to Oro was the only sensible course. Teroro, surveying his depleted ranks, brooded on revenge, but had to recognize that the priest had outwitted him and had stricken down enough of his men to demoralize the rest. The crewmen sensed that their chiefs were disorganized and that ultimate power now lay with the High Priest, but they did not know by what political contrivances the power would be transferred; while the junior priests were so excited by the obvious victory of Oro that they had volunteered, while still on Havaiki, to assassinate both Tamatoa and Teroro and thus to settle the island's problems once and for all.
To their surprise, the High Priest had not assented to this; in act, he had condemned his overeager assistants and had reasoned: "If we dispose of the king and his brother in this manner, the people will lament their passing and might even rise against us, but if we continue as we have been doing, then the people themselves will discover that their king is powerless against the wishes of Oro, and they will either force him to Oro's will, or they will desert him."
"But what if the king is obstinate?" an old priest had asked, recalling the record of Tamatoa's father, against whom Havaiki, Tahiti and Moorea had united in war, fruitlessly.
The High Priest had looked up at the sacrifices dangling in the moonlight and had observed: "Tamatoa may remain obstinate, but his people won't. Have you been watching how his men are even now confused and bitter? Where is Teroro, their leader, right now? Idling in the hut of Tehani!”
The old priest, not certain that Tamatoa would abdicate, had argued: "Whom shall we select to rule Bora Bora if we do depose the king?"
The High Priest had hoped that this question would not be raised, because he did not wish to stand forth among his followers as the originator of a plan that had indeed been devised by the generality of priests, so he had equivocated and said, "Oro has chosen a successor."
"Who?" the old man had pressed. "Oro has chosen Tehani's father, the great chief of Tatai." There had been a long silence as the enormity of this decision struck the priests, for they were Bora Bora bred, and what was proposed was nothing less than the submission of their island to the ruling house of Havaiki, a thing never accomplished in the past by siege or war or contrivance. The High Priest had known that this intelligence must at first be repugnant, so before anyone could speak, he had added, "It is Oro who has chosen Tatai."
The invocation of Oro's name among men who had only recently staked their lives on this god, effectively halted comment, and the High Priest had continued: "That is why Tatai has urged his daughter Tehani to become the wife of Teroro. He will move to Havaiki and take with him most of his vigorous supporters, and they will soon become swallowed